


Protect my heart

by queergirlElle



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: (kind of), Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, lena has a kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-05-18 13:50:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 47,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19335802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queergirlElle/pseuds/queergirlElle
Summary: Lena has been getting death threats ever since she can remember. They have almost gotten boring over the years. But now she has a daughter and while she couldn’t care less about her own safety, her daughter needs to be protected. Whatever it takes.ORAlex is the bodyguard of Lena's child (and later even more than that).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey I’m back!  
> I had a lot to do these past few months but I still wrote every now and then. This is going to be a longer story so buckle up and enjoy!
> 
> Also, are you all still on board for Agentcorp or have you jumped on the Dansen train?

Alex hated many things. Mint ice-cream, rom-coms, politicians, and a variety of other things. She generally had a pessimistic world view but she hated one thing in particular: snobby rich people. 

When her boss had called her into his office about two months ago, she was expecting a promotion because, she could admit it, she was good at her job. She was undefeated in hand-to-hand combat, her shooting had improved and she had recently saved the life of two kids that had been taken hostage.  
Her mother had told her that working for a security agency was a waste of her talents but Alex loved what she was doing and she admittedly was the best at it.

So that day when she walked into her boss’ office, she’d expected a promotion, and she got one. What she didn’t expect was that by that she got assigned to cases that were tougher to handle because they mostly involved rich and famous people.  
And oh, how Alex hated them.  
Most of those people weren’t as concerned about their safety as they were about their reputation and their public image. They usually didn’t like listening to others, especially not security staff. That was only one of the many things that drove Alex crazy, but she had this job now and the raise she got was nice, too. 

So far, she’d only had to deal with smaller cases. Usually, she was standing around at events, simply observing. She didn’t mind the easy tasks, but she was also waiting for something more exciting, even if she had to deal with exhausting people.

 

So, almost two months after she’d been promoted, she was called into her boss’ office once again.

“How do you feel about taking a full-time job?” Mr. Jonez asked, not even waiting for Alex to sit down. “I know we’ve discussed it before and you said no, but I thought-“

“You thought my opinion might have changed because I called off my engagement. Just say it how it is, sir,” Alex shot back. She had no time to talk around things because this was another fact she should’ve added; Alex despised working for famous people but everything was good as long as it kept her thoughts away from her ex-fiancée.

“Yes, that’s what I was about to say,” he admitted. “But also, you’re one of my best agents and there is a lot of money involved. So, what do you say, Danvers?”

Alex thought about it for full two seconds before she nodded. It did sound good to get away from it all. She and her fiancée had broken up only a month ago so the cut was still deep. Jumping head first into work actually sounded perfect to her. Well, not perfect but she wasn’t one to miss this opportunity.

“I have a new client and she’s looking for a full-time bodyguard for herself and for her daughter. Around-the-clock surveillance, especially for the kid as requested by the client. The staff has already been screened and their house is equipped with the newest surveillance technology so the basic work is done.” 

Alex nodded again to indicate that she was still following.

“She would like to meet you before she decides and I told her that that’s not how it works but she insisted. She is…” he sighed, clearly looking for words. “ _strong-willed_ ,” he said the same second that Alex said “ _snobby_.”

Her boss shrugged as if he was secretly agreeing. “You shouldn’t be so negative about that. After all she’s the one willing to pay $6.000 per day.”

“She what?” Alex asked, eyes wide open. She’d already been happy about her last raise but this was clearly out of the usual price range.

“I told her about our prices but she had her own opinion about this. She had her own opinion about a lot of things.”

Alex leaned back in her chair and let out a sigh. By the sound of it she wouldn’t get along with the woman at all. Clients like this were usually the ones that got themselves killed because they didn’t like to listen and thought they knew everything better. But on the other hand, the money was tempting. She’d spent a lot recently on a wedding that they didn’t even have and she hadn't been able to get a refund. And a little extra cash was never a bad idea.

“I’ll meet with her,” she eventually said, hoping that the woman would turn out to be bearable.

 

 

Normally, Alex would get to read a client’s file before she went to meet with them for the first time and normally, she would at least know the client’s name. But not this time. This time she just got an address and a time and Alex was already pissed off. Would it have been that hard to hand out basic information to a licensed security agent?

But Alex didn’t have much time to be angry, because as soon as she arrived at the big office complex, she was taken aback by it. She had seen the L-Corp building from the outside but she’d never stepped foot in it. Why would she? Everybody knew that it was better to avoid the Luthor family. They were one of the most powerful families in the country. Their money and power could get them anything they wanted and, in the past, they hadn’t always used this for good. Still, she had a job to do and a client was a client, she didn’t get to choose who she wanted to work for and who not. And in the end, it could be anybody in this building. (At least that was what she told herself to keep the little piece of hope that was still left.)

Alex walked up to the front desk and stated her name and then was quickly waved through all of the security measures and guided to the elevators. As Alex stepped out of the elevator on the top floor, she wished she’d gotten to read the file of her client. At least then she would know what to prepare for and could have refreshed the details about the Luthor family, which weren’t all present in her mind in that moment. And up to this point she still wasn’t sure who exactly her client was.

 

 

“Miss Luthor, Alex Danvers from DEO security is here,” her assistant’s chipper voice announced from the door.

“Send her in,” Lena Luthor said without looking up. Then she pushed some papers together to make her desk seem at least almost presentable, Alex Danvers’ file still lying in the middle. Lena had decided to reread it again before the interview. She was sure that there was something she had missed, something that made her inacceptable for this job, but so far, she hadn’t been able to find anything.

“You just don’t trust anyone with your daughter’s life. That’s completely understandable. But you have to give them a chance at least,” her friend Sam had said at their daily morning coffee in the office. Lena knew that was true and that only made her want to prove Sam wrong even more.

She’d asked her assistant to contact every single available security agency and get the info about their best agents. Then she had personally reviewed those and Alex Danvers’ file had been the only one that had ended up on the ‘maybe-stack’ next to all the ‘definitely-nots.’ Lena knew her requirements weren’t easy to fulfil but she couldn’t just hand her daughter over to anybody.

When she heard footsteps approach, Lena sighed again and tried to mentally prepare herself for the interview.

 

 

Her assistant had left and was holding the door open. “You can go right in,” she said and gestured at the open door with a professional smile.

A second later, Alex stepped inside the huge, bright office and closed the door behind her. There was Lena Luthor, sitting at her desk, skipping through a small binder in her hands. When she saw that someone had entered, she put it away and got up to greet her. 

Alex hated that she was so unprepared. Of course, Alex knew Lena Luthor and now that she thought about it, it made sense that she was the one seeking protection. It probably wasn’t possible to not know her in this city (or this country).  
If Alex remembered correctly, she’d recently been named CEO of L-Corp, one of the fortune 500 companies and her family’s past spoke for itself. Her mother and her brother had both tried to kill her before and ever since she’d had her daughter four years ago, the assassination attempts had doubled. It was clear why she needed a bodyguard and why she paid so much for it. Still, now that Alex stood right before her, seeing her with her own eyes for the first time, she was more than surprised.

“Miss Danvers,” the CEO said and shook Alex’s hand. Alex needed a second to regain her posture. She had met famous people before but it had been weird every single time. She’d never seen a Luthor from this close, nor shaken their hand. 

Lena Luthor was definitely a force to be reckoned with. She made only three steps towards Alex and still, these three steps carried so much power and elegance at the same time. She had her hair in a high ponytail and not a single hair was out of place. Her whole office looked like this, everything was neat and seemed to have a fixed place in the big room.

“It is nice to meet you, Miss Luthor,” Alex said and hoped that not too much time had passed.  
The CEO simply gestured at a chair in front of her desk and sat down again herself. Her whole presence was set out to intimidate her opponents and Alex hated that she felt like she was the weaker one of them in this scenario.

“Let’s make this quick. I’m looking for personal security for my daughter. Her name is Ellie, she’s four and so far, my bodyguards have had an eye on her but she’s getting older and actually spends more time with other kids her age so I think it’s time that she gets her own personal security. I don’t expect you to play nanny, I already have one. I just want you to make sure nothing happens to her,” she said with some sort annoyed professionalism. “Any questions so far?” she asked after a short break and looked right into Alex’s eyes and it felt as if she was staring right into her soul.

“No,” Alex simply answered. She still had to read Miss Luthor’s file because asking all her questions in person would take way too long.

“Ellie is starting kindergarten soon and I arranged for her to be safe there at all times so while she’s there in the morning you would be free to do whatever you want. For that, I expect you to be there the rest of the day,” Miss Luthor continued. 

Her features loosened a little as she talked about her daughter, making Alex believe that there was actually a human with feelings left under this mask. 

“I know, usually you hire more than one person to rotate but she doesn’t like strangers that much and I don’t want to have more than necessary in our home.”

Alex nodded slowly. If she was to take this job it would definitely be tough but also that explained the huge amount of money she would get. It would also mean no time for her private life (not that she had much of a private life these days.)

“I’ve read your file and I’ve seen that you’ve briefly worked with children before and your history seems impressive enough.”

“How come you got to read my file, but I wasn’t allowed to read yours?” Alex asked with a grin before she could stop herself.

“I don’t want any of that cocky attitude around my kid, am I clear? If I even consider hiring you. So far your file was more impressive than your person.”

The answer was shot back within a second and by now Alex could say that she didn’t need to question Lena Luthor’s position in this company. If she was behaving like this in a job interview then Alex could only imagine what she was like in a conference room. Too bad that she obviously had no sense of humour. 

“I didn’t even say much yet,” Alex sighed and leaned back. 

Now Lena was staring at her with fire in her eyes, but definitely not in a positive way.

“Would you be that disrespectful in front of my daughter?” 

“Why are you even asking that?” Alex asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I am a professional and also I’m not stupid. But if me talking back to you is already upsetting you then I’m sorry but this isn’t going to work out.”

“You sure understand that I wouldn’t just hire anyone to be around my daughter every day,” Lena snapped back in an instant, leaning forward. Clearly a power move, as Alex observed. She had to smile a little, two could play this game.

“I know for a fact that I’m the best you could get for this job. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“So far I’m still neither impressed nor convinced that I should hire you for anything.”

“Honestly, I don’t care if you like me or not,” Alex said and got up from her chair. She didn’t have all day for this. “I’m just here to do my job and if you hire me, I’m going to protect that girl with my life, no matter what. And if you don’t want me then feel free to try and look for someone better.”

They stared at each other, earnest expression in their eyes, before Lena looked down and reopened Alex’s file.

“You start tomorrow. One week of probation. My assistant will give you all the details you need. I see you at 8am sharp, Miss Danvers.”

Alex’s lips spread into a wide grin as she moved to shake Miss Luthor’s hand once more. The CEO’s face on the other hand, was giving absolutely nothing away.

“See you tomorrow, boss.”

And with that she was out of the office. Quickly, of course, before Miss Luthor would think about it again. There hadn’t even been a hint of a smile on her face and Alex wasn’t sure if her face muscles even knew what that was.  
Still, Alex smiled the whole way home. She had gotten a job that she wasn’t even sure she wanted in the first place, she had no idea why she’d argued that passionately and she didn’t know if she would be able to cope with Lena Luthor at all, but somehow, she couldn’t stop herself from being happy about it. 

Oh, she had no idea what she’d gotten herself into.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Welcome back to this story!  
> Thanks for all the comments! I'll try to live up to your expectations.

It was the next morning 5 minutes before 8 when Alex knocked at Lena Luthor’s door. She hated to admit it but usually she wasn’t very punctual and Miss Luthor seemed like the type of person, who would fire someone for being two minutes late.  
Therefore, with five minutes to spare, Alex knocked at the door. The door to a house that was almost the size of a mansion. It was surrounded by huge walls and at the entry, one of the bodyguards (she assumed) had searched not only her completely, but also her sister, who had volunteered to drive her here.  
Miss Luthor’s assistant had told her that she wouldn’t need her own car as she was allowed to drive one of Miss Luthor’s. 

(Obviously, she was a person with multiple cars. That fact made Alex roll her eyes a little. And maybe she also was a little bit jealous.) 

Anyway, Alex didn’t need her own car, so Kara had offered to drive her here on her way to work. Even after Kara had explained to the bodyguard that she was just about to leave again and wouldn’t even go inside, he didn’t stop searching her until he was done with what he called ‘standard security measures.’ Now Alex knew that not any idiot could just walk in here, so all of that wasn’t so bad, apart from the fact that he definitely scared Kara a little and he had taken all of Alex’s guns for now.

“I’m sorry,” Alex mouthed over to her sister as she was padded down.

“It’s okay,” Kara answered, not bothering to whisper at all. “I’m just happy that I don’t have to drive you to work every day.”

That earned her a wary look from the guy before he told them that they were allowed to go inside. Kara instantly moved to give Alex a bone crushing hug. 

“Good luck, be save, and call me!” she mumbled into her sister’s neck.

Alex simply nodded back and after a few seconds Kara let go and went back to her car. Alex looked after her for a second, before she picked up her suitcase and made her way to the front door.  
It hadn’t been easy to pack all of her necessary things into one suitcase within a few hours, while also trying to explain all of this to her mother over the phone. The offer had come in two days ago and now Alex was already starting her first day of work. It seemed crazy that this was happening so fast but that was probably just another aspect of this industry that she still had to get familiar with.

 

An older woman opened the door and ripped Alex out of her spiralling thoughts.

“Hi I’m Alex Danvers. Miss Luthor is expecting me.”

The woman nodded and let her in. She quickly introduced herself as Rosa, the housekeeper and cook. 

“I’ve been with the Luthor’s for almost 30 years, but Lena has always been my favourite,” she said as she ushered Alex into the enormous hallway.

“I told you no to gossip so much, Rosa,” Lena said as she came down the stairs. Her voice was strong and her face didn’t give anything away about her current mood.

“Miss Danvers, it’s nice to see you again.” They shook hands and it was clear that this was only a set phrase. On the other hand, Lena Luthor seemed to be in a lighter mood than the previous day which was probably the best for everyone. Her appearance was still the same, neat and professional, and Alex wondered if it was normal for her to walk around the house in a dress and heels.

“I forgot to ask about the dress code yesterday,” Alex said as she observed Lena’s clothes. Better get her mistakes out at first. “I’ve seen your other guard is wearing a tuxedo which I don’t have with me right now but it won’t be a problem to organize.” 

She knew she should’ve asked that yesterday but had forgotten it in the sheer amount of information and requirements that had been dumped on her by Miss Luthor’s assistant.

“I don’t expect you to wear suits or even blazers and all that around the house. Jeans and a blouse are appropriate enough. I don’t want you to scare my daughter after all and I know for a fact that she is not pleased with the ‘men with the sunglasses’ living in our guest house.”

She said that and then directed a small smile at Alex. The agent couldn’t believe it that Miss Luthor was actually in such a good mood. If this could be considered a good mood, after all, she was still uptight, almost worryingly tense.  
Then she turned around and started giving Alex a tour of the house. It took Alex a second before she even realised what was going on and she quickly hurried after her new boss.

“I assume I’ll be living in the guest house as well,” Alex said after she’d caught up with Lena.

“Actually, you’re not. It’s being renovated right now so there is not much space and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have you closer to my daughter in case anything happens.”

They passed by the kitchen into the back area of the house. “This will be your room. Your bathroom is right through that door.”

Alex took a step into the room. It was small but tastefully equipped. A large bed took up the most space of the room, surrounded by a dresser an armchair and even a TV and a potted plant. One big window offered a view to the back garden. 

“We barely stay in this part of the house so you should find enough peace and quiet here. Usually it’s just Rosa when she’s doing the laundry across the hall.”

Alex set her suitcase down next to the bed and looked around again before she followed the woman out to tour the rest of the house. Remembering where all the rooms were would probably turn out to be the hardest part of this job, Alex thought as Lena showed her another bathroom.

“Ellie and I sleep upstairs. The only two ways inside this house are through the front and the back door. Both are equipped with cameras and alarms so there is not much to worry about.”

“Do you feel save in your home?” Alex asked and realised that it was the first time in a while that she had spoken.

Miss Luthor looked up to meet her eyes. Clearly the question took her off guard and she had to think about it for a few seconds.

“I do,” she eventually said and continued with her monologue.

 

Finally, after what had seemed like an eternity, Lena was done with the tour and with explaining all the security standards of her home.

“Are you ready to meet Ellie?”

Alex nodded and out of habit fixed her shirt as if she had to impress someone. “Just one question: Does she know why I’m here? I mean do you tell her what’s going on?”

“She knows that you’re here to protect us, because there are bad people out there. I didn’t want to lie to her but she is asking way too many questions. You can tell her the truth, just not too explicitly.”

“Okay, then I’m ready.”

Miss Luthor gave her another tight smile before she knocked on a door to her left.

“Ellie darling, there is someone here I’d like you to meet,” she said in the softest voice Alex had ever heard from her. She walked into the room and Alex slowly followed her.  
There on the floor sitting on a fluffy rug was a little girl that looked like a miniature Lena Luthor. The dark, almost black hair, the green eyes and pale skin. Alex had to smile as she saw the two of them next to each other. The girl was in the middle of drawing something as she looked up.

“Remember what we talked about yesterday?” she asked in her friendly voice.

The little girl nodded slowly.

“This is Miss Danvers. She will make sure nothing happens to you,” and then Miss Luthor looked at her expectantly. It took a second before Alex realised that she should say something.

“Hi Ellie,” she said and crouched down in front of the girl. Not to close so she wouldn’t scare her away. “You can call me Alex. I’m going to stay with you for a while, is that okay?” she asked in what hopefully was a soft and approachable voice.

The girl nodded, still clinging to her mother’s hand.

“Are you here to protect us from bad people?” she asked in a small voice.

“Yes, I am. I’ve protected kids like you before, you know? And I’m making sure nothing happens to you and your mom.” 

At that the girl smiled a little. Alex was cheering on the inside and shot a big smile back into her direction.

“What are you drawing?” She decided to ask after a second had passed. Suddenly, she felt like she had no idea how to talk to children.

The girl squirmed a little as if she wasn’t sure what to do. Then she picked up her drawing and held it to her chest to hide it. “It’s me and mommy at the zoo but it’s not finished so you can’t see.”

Alex smiled at her again and gave her a simple “okay” before she rose to her feet again.

At that Ellie instantly turned around to get back to her drawing.

Miss Luthor stroked through the girl’s hair once more and gestured at Alex to leave the room.

“That went better than expected,” Lena said once she’d closed the door behind the girl and Alex couldn’t help but smile at her. 

“I’ll give you some time to unpack, lunch is at noon and after that I have to leave for work. You can make yourself familiar with the house and the whole property.”

And there was the strict business voice again. Alex smiled at the fact that this woman could switch her whole attitude within seconds. It was probably a helpful quality in her job. She followed Miss Luthor downstairs and then tried to find the way back to her room to unpack and text her sister an update.

 

 

Lena followed Alex downstairs and watched her disappear into her new room. She waited until the door was closed before she called Sam. It was a wonder that she could still function without her best friend by her side every second of the day.

“How did it go?” Sam asked, without even saying hello.

“I don’t know if she’s the right one for this job,” Lena sighed and slid onto one of the bar stools.

“Why? What did she do?”

“Nothing, yet. I just have a bad feeling.”

“She’s literally been there for ten minutes. Give her a chance,” Sam sighed into the phone and Lena knew in an instant that she was right.

“I’m giving her a chance! She’s here after all,” she sighed again. “I’d much rather be in the office right now. I have so much more to do.”

“Girl, your priorities are so wrong. I have everything under control here. You go and enjoy your day off or else I come over and force you to relax.” 

A smile crept on Lena’s lips and she rolled her eyes. There was a reason why Sam was her best friend but sometimes this reason was really hard to remember. Lena had already known that Sam would say exactly that but sometimes she just needed to be reassured. 

It was nice to not be in the office in the morning. She’d had time for breakfast with Ellie without having to run out halfway through. But there was one thing that was still clinging to the back of her mind. There would probably be another letter waiting for her in her office and it itched her to get there and hide it. If Sam or her assistant or anybody else ever found out about them… Lena was sure they would freak out. 

When she didn’t respond anything else, Sam started talking again.

“You can tell me everything about her tomorrow morning over coffee, okay?”

Lena sighed again, “yeah, okay.”

“And until then, don’t kill her.”

And with that she’d hung up the phone. Lena rolled her eyes and put the phone on the counter. No promises on that.

 

 

For the rest of the day Alex didn’t have a lot to do. She texted her sister and her mother, telling them that she was okay and after that, she introduced herself to both of Miss Luthor’s bodyguards; a bulky, dark man called Aaron, who didn’t seem to talk much and an older man named Henry, who happily welcomed Alex. He had been the one who had searched her earlier but now he seemed much nicer. Henry also gave her back her weapons after he’d confirmed it with Miss Luthor.

After that, Alex walked around the property, inspecting all the ways inside and possible blind spots that the cameras didn’t cover. Even though Alex would never admit it, she was a little nervous about her new job. She’d never carried such big responsibility of being a full-time bodyguard before. There was more stress that was coming with it. She couldn’t just relax at the end of her shift or hand the responsibility over to someone else. No, she was the one constantly carrying the burden.  
Also, there was the fact that this was the first time she was working with a child for a longer period of time. Somehow, she had the feeling that by that she carried even more responsibility than with adults  
and she hoped that she was up for that task.

 

 

It was a few hours later, Lena had gotten back from work late and hadn’t said anything to Alex. Not that she expected much but still. Alex ended up eating dinner with Rosa in the kitchen and listening to her gossip about the neighbours. Overall, Alex could say that she’d never had such a relaxed first day of the job. It was a nice change for once.

Alex entered the house through the back door and paid extra attention to locking it and checking that the alarm was in place. (She’d found all the alarm codes in the binder from Miss Luthor’s assistant, all perfectly organized of course.)  
It seemed like a good idea to take a walk around the building again before she went to sleep. On the one hand, so she could look for anything suspicious and on the other hand because she loved walking outside at night. The darkness and the peace and quietness that came with it seemed simply perfect to Alex.  
On her way to check the front door as well, she could see that there was light coming from the kitchen. Just as she made her way down the hall, Lena stepped out of the kitchen and turned the lights off.

“Goodnight.”

If Lena was a cartoon figure, she would’ve jumped so high her head would’ve gotten stuck in the ceiling. She let out a shriek and the glass of water slipped through her fingers. She winced as the glass hit the floor and shards and water spread in the hallway.

“Fuck!” Lena whisper-shouted, her sleeping daughter still in mind.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Alex mumbled and fumbled for the light switch. When she eventually found the light switch on the wall, the light flicked on so now Alex could see an angry face starring at her. Lena Luthor, dressed in what looked like satin pyjamas, with her arms crossed in front of her chest, was standing barefoot in a puddle of glass and water and looking at her with nothing but judgement in her eyes.

“Don’t move, I’ll get something to clean this mess up,” Alex said and tried to find something like a dustpan in the cabinets she could reach without having to move too much.

Lena waited a few long seconds before she had enough and tried to move out of the kitchen and somehow get to the stairs without hurting herself. She managed to do not more than two steps before she slipped, and in an attempt to catch herself she stomped onto a piece of glass with her full weight.  
The pain pressed the air right out of her lungs and the curse got stuck in her throat. Tears shot into her eyes, which only made her angrier. She managed to move a few more steps until she reached the stairs and sat down.

“Shit, are you okay?” Alex asked, when she finally looked up and saw Lena clinging to her bloody foot. “Didn’t I say don’t move?” There wasn’t accusation in her voice. It sounded more like concern and it threw Lena off more than she would’ve thought. “Wait, let me help you. I’m-“

“Can you shut the fuck up for once?”

Alex stopped in her motion and was now looking at her with wide eyes. Lena angrily pulled the large piece of glass out of her foot. Then she tried to wipe off the blood with her sleeve and got up again. Without another word she hobbled her way upstairs, only wincing slightly as she tried to stand on her injured foot.

Alex looked after her with wide eyes. After a second, she realised that the dustpan was still in her hands and she was still surrounded by a mess. She crouched down to clean up the rest but not without thinking about what had just happened. There was an itch in her body to go upstairs and properly clean and bandage that wound but she knew that she would only make the situation worse if she was trying to help.  
After a few minutes she had collected the shards, mopped up the water and cleaned up the few drops of blood. More than a few thoughts in her head told her that this was mostly her fault. 

If this wasn’t the best way to impress her new employer on her first day of work, then what was?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!  
> Just a quick info: I wanted Alex and the Luthor ladies to warm up to each other really slowly so that means give this story a little time to pick up pace.  
> But for now, enjoy!

“Please cancel all my morning appointments and tell Sam that I won’t make it to coffee today,” Lena said into the phone as she dropped onto the backseat of her car.

“Of course, Miss Luthor. Will that be all?” her assistant asked.

Lena debated with herself for a second, but if she wanted to fire Alex and find someone new then that could wait until she was at the office herself. She ended the call and told her driver to take her to the hospital.

After last night, her foot was still in horrible pain. Normally, she would’ve simply ignored it until it went away but this morning, she hadn’t been able to get into any of her high heels without being in unspeakable pain. Sure, she could go into her meeting with flats on, but these extra few inches gave her a better posture and what felt like more dominance over her opponents.

 

With Lena on her way to the hospital, that left Alex alone with Ellie. Well, alone with Ellie and the babysitter and Rosa. While Rosa greeted her friendly as she put the groceries away and already started gossiping about the neighbours again, Alex didn’t know what to think of the babysitter. She was a young woman, probably in her early twenties and she looked absolutely annoyed at the fact that she was here. She’d quickly introduced herself as Lauren and didn’t even wait for Alex to say her name before she was gone again. Now, she and Ellie were making a puzzle together at the kitchen table and while Ellie looked at all the pieces in concentration Lauren was only looking at her phone, only answering Ellie half-heartedly every now and then.  
Rosa gave her a judgemental look and Alex knew in an instant that there was more gossip to come about that later on. 

Instead of staying in the kitchen, Alex escaped Rosa’s stories and made her way back to her room. She wanted to continue reading all the files and doing a background check on the babysitter. Miss Luthor had told her that all of her employees had already been checked over but Alex couldn’t help it, she felt weird around that woman. And she was rather safe than sorry. 

Also, Miss Luthor hadn’t even so much as looked at her this morning. Alex had wanted to apologize again but it was hard to catch her in a quiet second and she’d rather do this right. She was truly sorry after all. Therefore, burying herself in her work seemed like the best option to make it up to her right now.

 

When Lena finally arrived at the office hours later, she had already missed most of her work day. There had been a smaller piece of glass still left in her foot, which had caused the swelling and Lena couldn’t help but be disgusted at her own body as she saw the doctor pull it out.  
So now she was finally at the office, having missed her important conference already. It also had been hard getting there because she wasn’t allowed to put pressure on her foot but there was no way she would use the crutches they gave her. Not even over her dead body.  
As her only solution she called Sam to come downstairs and pick her up from where her driver had left her.

The first thing Sam did when she saw her was laugh out loud. Lena was standing in the middle of the entrance hall of L-Corp, into which she had managed to casually hobble into. Hopefully, Sam was the only one who had seen her so far.

“Stop laughing and help me to the elevator,” Lena hissed. Sam quickly wiped the few tears off her cheeks and hurried over to help her friend. 

“Have you always been this short?” she asked with a grin as she put an arm around Lena’s waist. Instead of answering, Lena elbowed her in the ribs, which only made Sam laugh again.

“So, why don’t you tell me what happened?” Sam asked, once they’d safely put Lena into her chair. “And I want every single detail.”

“It’s good to see that you’re so delighted by my misery.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Sam said with a cheeky grin. “Now, spill.”

When Lena finally told her the story, she hoped that Sam would understand and share her anger at least a little but all she got was a fit of laughter. Once Sam had recovered enough to talk again, she cleared her throat and looked at Lena with an almost serious expression.

“Let me recap; you’re mad at her cause she said goodnight and you forgot she was there?”

“No! I’m mad because she scared me and now I have a foot the size of a fucking basketball and had to reschedule all my meetings!”

This time, Sam’s grin turned into a soft smile and she sighed.

“I’ll go and ask Jess to bring us some coffee and cancel the rest of your meetings today and then you’re going to relax and tell me what’s bothering you so much. You’ve been on the edge these past few days and I’m worried about you.”

Before Lena could protest, Sam was already on her way out to tell Jess. She was way too angry right now to relax and she couldn’t afford to miss even more meetings. But as she was finally leaning back in her chair in silence, she realised just how exhausted she was.

Maybe her friend was right and she needed a break. With a sigh, she leaned back and closed her eyes for just a second.

 

 

When Lena arrived home a few hours later she felt much better. Both physically and mentally. After her unplanned nap she had woken up to a cup of cold coffee and a note from Sam telling her to sleep well. After all, her friend had been right, she was overworked and spend too much time worrying about trivial things. And maybe it was the fact that there hadn’t been any new letter, that she had been able to finally relax for a little while. (Or the pain meds made her drowsy, who knew?)

She slipped off her jacket in the hallway and turned around to see Alex standing there with an apologetical look on her face. The redhead was fidgeting with the sleeves of her sweater, something that looked entirely out of character for her.

“Apology accepted,” Lena said before Alex could even open her mouth. “I’m not mad at you.”

And without waiting another second, she went upstairs to her daughter, still hobbling a little.

Alex didn’t get another chance to apologize after that but to her, Miss Luthor seemed as if she had completely moved on from the topic, so Alex tried to do the same. Still, she felt guilty and basically only waited for the moment she’d get fired but so far that moment hadn’t come.

 

 

The first week passed by rather quickly. There wasn’t much to do yet, because Ellie would only start kindergarten the following week. Alex was mostly sitting around the house or walking in the huge garden, trying to make herself familiar with every single corner.  
She knew that this first week wasn’t much work for her so she and Ellie could get to know each other. Or at least for them to spend a little time together so Miss Luthor could decide if she wanted to ‘keep’ Alex or not.

It was surprising to Alex that she didn’t see Miss Luthor often in these first few days. Of course, she knew that running a company would keep someone quite busy but she’d thought that Miss Luthor would spend more time at home, observing her. Still, Alex wasn’t one to complain.

(The truth was, she had tried it once, asking Miss Luthor about her usual work hours and if she always worked that much but it had been a horrible idea, which Alex should’ve known beforehand. It ended in her receiving a long and scary lecture from Miss Luthor about why she wasn’t in the place to criticise anything about her work or the way she raised her daughter. Ever since that had happened, Alex tried to keep her opinion to herself.)

Instead she talked a lot to Rosa, the housekeeper, to learn more about Ellie and also the whole family dynamics. Rosa really was talking always and a lot, but it helped Alex to gain an overview, which she had hoped she would get from Lena Luthor herself and not out of second hand.

On her third day, Miss Luthor’s assistant had emailed her a list about all the upcoming events with the request for Alex to check them if they were safe enough for Ellie to attend and what kind of extra security would be needed. Alex had to smile as she saw ‘Molecular biology discovery award ceremony’ right next to ‘kindergarten trip to the zoo.’

Overall, the first few days passed by rather uneventful. Alex was almost getting bored by doing nothing most of the time. 

 

It was on Friday that Ellie and Alex really met each other one on one for the first time. Alex had been in the kitchen, preparing an afternoon snack for herself.  
Suddenly Ellie walked in, clearly expecting someone else there. She stopped as she saw the tall redhead and looked up at her as if she wasn’t sure what to do now. When Alex spotted her in the doorway, she threw her a smile, but continued her work in silence. If she had learned one thing in the past few days it was that taking the girl off guard or pressuring her to talk were the best ways to scare her away and she clearly didn’t want that.

“What are you doing?” Ellie asked after what seemed like hours of silence. Her face was half hidden behind the counter, keeping a safe distance. Alex was surprised that she had spoken at all.

“I’m making myself a fruit salat. Do you want some?”

Ellie just looked up at her with big eyes. A few seconds passed before she quickly grabbed some grapes from the counter she could barely reach, and ran away. Alex smiled after her before she continued to cut the apple. She could book this as an achievement.

 

 

Lena put the letter back into the envelope. It had been the third one this month and these criminals were certainly not getting more eloquent. The letters did get more personal and detailed over time which was only mildly concerning her.  
She’d thought about telling Alex about the death threats she was receiving almost every week but Alex was Ellie’s bodyguard not hers and Henry and Aaron had already been informed of the problem. Not that they knew she was still getting these letters but that wasn’t important now. She didn’t want anybody worry about her.

“What do you have there?” Sam asked as she walked through the open office door and Lena jumped a little. She hadn’t expected anyone to be here that early.

“Just some bills,” she said with a hopefully natural voice and carelessly shoved the letter into her desk drawer.

Sam’s eyes rested on her for a few long seconds. Her face looked concerned; brows furrowed in confusion. Lena knew that she would tell Sam what was wrong if she could. But right now, she didn’t want to pull her into everything she’d going on. She’d already put all the stress and anger on her these past few weeks and there was only so much that a friendship could handle. Lena didn’t have many friends and she couldn’t bare the thought of losing Sam because she couldn’t handle her own problems.

Lena sighed and opened a new document on her laptop. Maybe if she started talking about the upcoming conference call, Sam would stop looking at her this way.

 

 

“Miss?” 

It took Alex a second before she realised that she had been addressed with that term. She looked up from her laptop to see Ellie standing behind her. Her hands fidgeting with the hem of her shirt.

“You can call me Alex, sweetie,” she said and fully turned around to the girl. “What’s up?”

“Can I go play outside? Mommy said to always ask you or Lauren first.”

“Where is Lauren? Isn’t she supposed to watch you right now?”

“On the phone,” Ellie said and shrugged a little.

Alex internally rolled her eyes. This woman was probably getting paid a massive amount of money to be here and couldn’t even do the basics of her job.

“Let’s go outside,” said and closed her laptop. Why would she bother and complain about someone to a four-year-old? She should thank Lauren for being so bad at her job that Ellie came to talk to her instead.

The little girl smiled and quickly ran towards the dresser in the hallway to pull out her shoes. Alex helped her tie the laces and slip on her yellow jacket and then quickly slipped on her own shoes and jacket.

Ellie stormed out of the door first and headed for the swings. It was a large swing set combined with monkey bars and a fireman’s pole that was standing right behind the terrace in the garden. It looked brand new and Alex assumed that Lena had it built recently. Ellie struggled to get onto the swing but after a few tries she made it and instantly started pushing her legs back and forth.

“Do you want me to push you?” Alex asked from where she was leaning against the pole.

The girl’s shining eyes and enthusiastic nod made Alex smile even more before she got behind her and started pushing her softly.

“Higher!” Ellie demanded and Alex could do nothing other than follow her wishes. 

And it felt as if suddenly it had clicked between the two of them. Suddenly, Ellie stopped looking at her with a wary look and accepted Alex’s presence in her home.

 

Alex noticed the person storming towards them from the corner of her eyes. Instantly, she turned around and out of reflex stepped in front of Ellie.  
It turned out to be Lauren (she’d finally remembered her name) and Alex visibly relaxed at that.

“There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” she yelled at Ellie once she was close enough.

“’M sorry, I wanted to go out play,” Ellie mumbled with a tiny pout on her face.

“You could’ve told me! I was worried about you,” she said, this time in a little friendlier tone. But the same second, she threw a disapproving look at Alex.

“Let’s go inside and get cleaned up before your mom comes home,” she said and held her hand out for Ellie to grab. The girl did so within a second but turned around to Alex again.

“Thank you for playing with me,” she said with a shy smile. Alex nodded with a smile and at the same time she was thrown off by how polite and articulated Ellie was. She was sure that she herself hadn’t been able to form grammatically correct sentences when she was that age. 

Alex was walking inside behind the two of them, wondering if these were the prodigy-Luthor genes shining through that everyone was talking about.

 

 

“Miss Danvers?”

Alex looked up from the heap of clothes on her bed. There was Miss Luthor, standing in the doorway, looking at Alex, then at the bed and then back at Alex. It wasn’t her fault that she’d had to pack in a rush and now couldn’t find the rest of her clean underwear.

“Yes?” she asked after deciding to ignore exactly how trashed everything looked.

“Would you like to have dinner with me and my daughter tonight?” Miss Luthor asked, making it sound more like a statement and less like a question. But Alex hadn’t planned on saying ‘no’ anyway.

“Yeah, uhm sure,” she answered and scolded herself for sounding so dumb.  
Being articulated around Miss Luthor was a hard task, though. She always seemed to have the right words. She never stuttered or stumbled over her words and honestly, Alex envied that ability.

“Your probation will be over in a day and I’d like to talk about your possible future here.”

Alex quickly nodded and forced herself to smile. It was probably better than trying to sound smart. Miss Luthor gave one last look at the bed, lingering for a second before she turned around and went away. 

Alex groaned internally and she groaned out loud when she realised that all her underwear had fallen off the bed and was practically lying in front of the door, directly in her employer’s line of sight. 

At least she now knew that she hadn’t forgotten to pack enough of it.

 

 

To say that the situation was weird would be an understatement. Alex had never eaten with the Luthors before. Usually, she joined Rosa in the kitchen or ate by herself in front of the TV. At least that was something that brought a bit of normalcy into her life, because at home she wouldn’t do it any other way. She knew it was a little sad but she tried not to think of that.

But here she was, sitting opposite of Lena Luthor, eating a piece of Rosa’s delicious vegetable lasagne. Ellie hadn’t said anything yet and Lena didn’t bother trying to fill the silence with small talk or any conversation at all.  
Alex whished that they could at least try to turn on some background music or anything that would fill the silence around them. It really was weird.

After horribly quiet thirty minutes, Lena put her napkin down and spoke for the first time.

“I have decided to offer you a full-time position here. So far you have proven yourself to be reliable and mostly professional. And Ellie seems to like you. Is that right, honey?”

Ellie quickly nodded and her cheeks turned a slight pink. Alex couldn’t think of a better compliment in that moment.

“The offer stands. It would be good if you could inform me whether you take it or not until the end of the day. We do have a tight schedule with Ellie starting kindergarten on Monday.”

“Of course I’ll take it,” Alex said before she even got the chance to think about it. She really had to learn how to control her mouth.

“Good,” Miss Luthor smiled and for the first time it didn’t seem tight or forced. She looked nice with a smile on her lips, beautiful even. “We can go over all further details tomorrow.”

And with that she got up from the table and helped her daughter down from the chair. Alex got up from the table as well, picking up her plate to help Rosa clean up. 

Miss Luthor took a step towards her and leaned in closer with a somehow unsettling smile on her face. 

“If something happens to my daughter, I’ll make sure to end your life. Figuratively and literally,” she whispered into the direction of Alex’s ear while still keeping eye contact. 

Alex gulped heavily. There was no doubt that this wasn’t any form of exaggeration. 

“I wouldn’t expect anything else, Miss Luthor.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again :)  
> I woke up with a hangover this morning and had to move out of my apartment today so if you find mistakes, please just ignore them, because I'm too sleep deprived to check this over again. Also this chapter is kinda huge and messy, but oh well... I hope you enjoy!

Now that Alex’s probation was over, she instantly had more to do. That evening, Lena had dumped all the plans for Ellies first day of kindergarten on her. All of her timetables, the names and contacts of her teachers and her security detail there, and overall so much information that Alex felt as if she was drowning in the sheer amount of paperwork.

Monday came quickly and before Alex knew she was sitting in a car with the two Luthor women on the way to one of the most prestigious kindergartens of the city. Miss Luthor had insisted on driving and Alex didn’t even try to convince her otherwise.

“Are you excited for your first day, honey?” she asked and quickly looked over her shoulder. 

Alex tried to hide her smile. Whenever Miss Luthor was speaking with her daughter, she had the softest voice and it was more than fascinating to Alex.

There was no answer from the backseat and Alex assumed it was because she was here, too. Ellie usually didn’t talk much when the three of them were in the same room. The bodyguard had no idea what the problem was here but she hoped it wasn’t her fault. On the other hand, Ellie had seemed really nervous that morning so maybe that was the whole problem here.

 

While Ellie and her mom walked into the building hand in hand, Alex stayed back. She leaned against the car and looked after them. She knew that from the moment they were on school ground, Ellie was in safe hands and there was nothing to fear. When they were only five steps away from the car, Ellie started talking excitedly and Alex tried not to let it get to her that much.

 

 

It was a few hours later, Alex had been at the office, checking in with her boss and informing him about everything new and after that she’d been at Kara’s place, getting most of her stuff.   
After calling off her engagement Alex had moved in with her sister for the simple reason that she had asked her to. It had been a better experience than expected and Kara’s guest room wasn’t all that bad but now that Alex would be living with the Luthor’s for unforeseeable future it was time for Kara to find a new roommate.

Alex had loaded some boxes in her car, leaving most of them in the basement and then had driven back to kindergarten. She couldn’t help but feel weird as she was waiting for the classroom door to open; standing next to all the other excited parents, waiting to hear about their kid’s first day.

The doors opened and behind all the loud and excited kids, Ellie was one of the last ones to slowly walk out. The little girl looked around and when she spotted Alex, she quickly walked over to her. 

“Hey sweetie, how was your first day?” Alex asked and crouched down in front of the girl. 

“It was okay,” she mumbled after a few seconds. With a soft smile Alex got back up and took the bright pink backpack from Ellie to swing it over her shoulder.

“Can I take your hand so we can walk across the parking lot?”

Without a word Ellie slipped her tiny hand into Alex’s big one and pulled her outside and across the parking lot as if she couldn’t wait to get home. She was stronger than Alex had expected and some of the parents looked at her with snotty smiles as they watched her get dragged along.   
Alex didn’t know what to make of that, but she felt weirdly unaccepted in the community of the rich and well-dressed parents. Maybe it was because they could somehow sense that she wasn’t one of them.

 

 

“Miss Danvers?” Alex looked up from the TV to Lauren, who was standing in the doorway with her jacket already on. “I’m leaving now, Ellie is in her room colouring or so. Bye.”   
And with that she was out of the door before Alex even realised what was going on. With a sigh she turned off the TV and got up from the couch. A look at her watch confirmed that Miss Luthor was supposed to be home 30 minutes ago. It was a wonder the sitter had even stayed that long. Usually, she was out of the door the second she got the chance.   
Alex quickly made her way upstairs to Ellie’s room to check on the girl.

“Hey, can I come in?” she asked and opened the door. Ellie was sitting on her bed, her legs swinging back and forth. She wasn’t doing anything else, just sitting there and waiting.

“Are you okay?” 

“Mommy is late,” Ellie said and her lower lip trembled a little. The held back tears were already glistening in her eyes.   
Alex took a few steps into the room but completely blanked on what to say. What was she supposed to do if the girl started crying? Give her wine and ice-cream? What did one normally do with kids in this situation? She wasn’t prepared for this at all.

“She’s probably already on her way,” Alex said after a few seconds but Ellie didn’t seem relieved at all. It took a second before Alex remembered that this had been Ellie’s first day of kindergarten and clearly, she wanted to tell her mom about it. It was probably hard for her to keep it all in the entire afternoon.

“How about we get some ice-cream? I know there is some left in the freezer.”

At that the little girl looked up, her eyes widened. “Before dinner?”

Alex’s lips spread into a smile. She knew she had her and that without even bringing up the wine.

“It’s a special day after all and on special days we can have ice-cream before dinner.”

Ellie quickly nodded, her tousled curls bouncing up and down.

“Okay, come on!” Alex said with a grin and Ellie jumped off the bed. This time she slipped her hand into Alex’s without waiting to be asked. She looked up at the redhead with her big green eyes as if to ask if it was okay and Alex couldn’t help it but her heart melted at the sight. Her lips curled into a smile and they made their way downstairs as quickly as possible.

 

Ellie excitedly bounced up and down on the chair at the counter while Alex searched through the freezer. 

“We only have yogurt ice-cream here but I think we can turn this into something good,” Alex said and got two bowls from the cupboard. “And next time we tell Rosa to buy the good stuff.”

She winked at Ellie and the girl instantly giggled.

“So, do you want chocolate sprinkles or rainbow sprinkles?”

“Both?”

“Good decision,” Alex said with a smile and put way too many sprinkles over their ice-cream.

“Here you go, ma’am.” With another giggle, Ellie accepted the bowl and a spoon. “But remember this is only because today is a special day. Don’t expect ice-cream from me every day.”

Ellie nodded with her bright eyes shining at Alex and quickly dug in. Alex stopped and took a second to appreciate the cuteness of Ellie’s face covered in ice-cream already. She tried to turn her attention to her own bowl but the smile wouldn’t leave her face. 

 

After a few minutes of quietly enjoying her ice-cream, Alex heard the front door open and a familiar clicking sound of heals on the hardwood floor. A few seconds later, Miss Luthor walked into the kitchen. 

“Hey, I’m- what’s going on here?” she stopped and asked.

“Hey mommy!” Ellie climbed down from her chair and hurried over to give her mom a hug, and in doing so she smeared ice-cream all over her pants.

“Hey honey, why are you having sweets before dinner?”

“Alex said on special days we can do that! And today is a special day!”

“Uh huh… go wash your hands and your face, honey. I need to talk to Alex for a moment.”

Alex, who was already putting the bowls into the dishwasher, turned around at the mentioning of her name. Somehow, she should’ve seen this coming. She practically attracted trouble more than anything else.

The second Ellie disappeared down the hallway, Miss Luthor started to snap at her: “You give my daughter ice-cream at this time of the day? What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that this was her first day of kindergarten, her mother was half an hour late already and she was on the verge of crying. I just tried to keep her distracted until you would arrive.”

Miss Luthor took a deep breath and Alex knew she had her. 

“While I appreciate that you were trying to help, I still don’t want you to give her any kinds of sweets before asking me first. Is that clear?”

There was the dark spark in her eyes again and Alex knew that she had messed up every progress they had made so far.

“Crystal.”

 

They didn’t talk about it again but a little while later Alex walked into the kitchen where Rosa cleaned up after dinner. There were two plates on the counter and one of them with nearly untouched food. It was a miracle that Miss Luthor hadn’t come to yell at her again.

Alex scolded herself internally. She should’ve thought about the fact that not all kids were like her little sister. Giving Kara ice-cream at any time of the day had always been Alex’s secret weapon to make her little sister smile just a little bit back when they were younger. The only difference here was that Kara could eat an entire buffet if she wanted to and Ellie apparently couldn’t.

 

 

“Is the second day of kindergarten also a special day?” Ellie asked as Alex helped her out of her child’s safety seat after they’d arrived home the next afternoon.

“Why?”

“Cause I want ice-cream.” 

And Alex couldn’t even help herself as she spluttered out in loud laughter. 

“Yeah, you wish,” she chuckled and Ellie grinned back. She looked way too proud of herself for that comment. Alex was just glad that they slowly started to get along. The girl smiled much more around her and actually dared to speak to her. And all that took was a little ice-cream and, well, Miss Luthor being angry with her.

“We can’t have ice-cream every day but if you want you can tell me about your day later?”

After a second Ellie softly nodded.

“Great! Now, hush inside. Lauren brought a new puzzle for you.”

At that the little girl rolled her eyes and somehow, while doing that, she looked exactly like her mother. And she was way too young to possess the power of eye rolling like a pro.   
But it was good to know that Ellie also wasn’t a fan of the babysitter. If it wasn’t out of place for her to say something, Alex would advise Miss Luthor to hire someone else. Someone, who actually liked working with kids. But she and Alex weren’t on great terms right now so it was probably the best to keep her mouth shut for a little while longer.

 

Overall, Alex had expected to see more of Miss Luthor around the house and also that she had to do more of her usual bodyguard-duties. She didn’t want to complain, not at all. It being quiet and not exciting was usually something good but Alex couldn’t help and be a little bored. She missed the action this job normally offered.

She got up from her bed and walked into the hall as she heard a weird sound. It turned out to be Ellie jumping down the stairs with both feet at the same time.

“What are you doing?” Alex asked with a smile.

Ellie finished the last with steps off with a big jump before she looked up at Alex with her big eyes.

“I’m bored,” she eventually said with a sigh.

“I thought you and Lauren wanted to go outside and collect leaves.”

“She said we’ll do it later.”

Alex sighed and rolled her eyes. Lauren’s shift would be over in a few minutes so she obviously didn’t plan on ever doing that.

“Do you want to go outside and do it now with me?”

“No,” Ellie said with an almost apologetical look on her face. “Can I watch TV?”

Alex nodded and tried not to be offended.

Just as Ellie had turned on the TV, a car was making its way up the driveway and the little girl jumped up again to meet her mom.

 

Lauren walked out of the door the second Lena walked in and Alex quickly followed her into the kitchen.

“I need to talk to you for a second,” Alex said and slid onto a bar stool.

Lena sat her bag down on the kitchen table and expectantly looked at Alex. She’d decided to do something about the situation and it absolutely couldn’t wait any longer. Now or never, she thought and cleared her throat.

“I think you should fire Lauren. She really isn’t good at her job and leaves Ellie unattended multiple times a day.”

“She came here with a recommendation and I single-handedly picked her out. She’s worked for me for almost a year now and you’ve only been here for less than two weeks,” Lena simply answered and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“You’re right, it isn’t my place to say something,” Alex sighed. “I still don’t think she’s the right one for this job.” 

Lena didn’t answer, she just looked at her with an unreadable expression on her face.

“Just think about it.”

And with that she turned around and walked to her room. Better to end the conversation before she could possibly loose her own job.

Lena looked after her with a frown on her face. The redhead really was an opinionated person and maybe it was worth listening to her but Lena just didn’t have the time to find another babysitter right now. Even her assistant was so busy that Lena felt almost bad for every favour she asked or task she gave her.

A tug on her skirt ripped her out of her thoughts. Her daughter clearly seemed as if she’d tried for her mom’s attention for quite a while.

“Mommy? I don’t like Lauren,” she whispered with wide eyes as if she was scared that someone could hear her.

Okay, things were settled. She would get rid of Lauren first thing in the morning.

 

 

“Can you pass me that, Lena?” Alex asked and held out her hand. “Oh sorry, uhm… Miss Luthor.”

Miss Luthor just smiled and handed over the kitchen knife. 

“I guess you can start calling me Lena. You’ve survived here longer than I had expected anyway, so why not?”

“Did you think I would quit or I would die?” Alex asked and looked at her with confusion written all over her face. It took a second before Miss Luthor – Lena – realised what she had said. 

“Oh no, sorry… I uhm… I meant that I expected you to quit.”

Alex smiled at the fact that Lena Luthor had just stumbled over her words for the first time since Alex had known her. Good to know that she could actually do that.

“Don’t worry, you won’t get rid of me that easily,” she answered with a wink. 

(Which was a little unprofessional and she had no idea why she’d done that but now it was too late anyway.)

Lena looked at her with wide eyes for a long second before she shook her head a little, so it almost wasn’t noticeable. Then she left the kitchen, Alex’s eyes never leaving her.

Maybe it was because she was slowly going insane that Alex started dropping ever kind of professionality she usually had.   
She didn’t know if she should be thankful or annoyed at the fact that Ellie was such a shy and introverted kid because that meant, that she barely wanted to leave the house and so Alex didn’t have to leave the house either (therefore she was going a little crazy), and it did get quite boring after a few days.   
She’d expected her job to be more stressful than that but also, she didn’t want to complain. After a few days of settling in, Ellie had slowly started making friends in kindergarten, or at least a friend. But it hadn’t been easy for her to do so.   
Two days ago, Ellie had stormed out of her class room as soon as she had the chance to and had rushed into Alex’s arms. Alex was more than overwhelmed, because Ellie had never hugged her before. It had been just a quick hug before Ellie started jumping up and down, telling her about her new friend Theo and about how they both liked koalas and the colour green. Ellie was more excited than Alex had ever seen her before and it seemed as if both of them had a hard time stopping to smile on their whole ride home.   
That night, Alex had looked up Theo, had run a background check on his parents, grandparents and siblings and on her run the next morning she had checked out their house, which happened to be not far from the Luthor estate. As expected, the whole family was clean and so Alex could let Ellie play with her new best friend without being worried. But that was about everything exciting that had happened so far.

 

 

Alex walked through the door, still sweaty from her morning run. It was a surprisingly hot day which made it harder to keep her speed up. But she needed to stay in shape and that was the least she could do for that. Also, she used the morning jog to check out if there were any suspicious people around the property. So far, the only suspicious thing had been how quiet it was in this part of the city.

When she emerged from the shower, she saw that she had a missed call from her sister. Quickly, she got dressed and headed into the kitchen to make some coffee before she called her back.

“Hey Kara, you called me earlier?”

“Finally!” Kara yelled into the speaker so Alex had to hold the phone away from her ear. “You’re not living in a secret submarine so why don’t you call me?”

“Uhm… did I forget something?”

“Game night tonight? James and Lucy are back in town and we wanted to celebrate. You said you would call me and tell me if you could make it.”

Alex buried her face in her free hand and groaned as silently as possible.

“I know, I’m sorry. I don’t think I can make it. I can’t just take an evening off on such short notice.”

“It’s not on short notice! I told you about it almost two weeks ago!” Kara’s voice had gotten shaky and it broke Alex’s heart to know that this was her fault.

“I’m sorry, Kara. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

It was silent for a second and Alex was worried that Kara might have hung up.

“Okay, next time,” she said after a while. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. Tell the others I said hi,” Alex said but Kara had already hung up the phone. She should’ve realised sooner that getting away from the memories of her fiancée this way, would also mean getting away from her friends and her sister.

Alex put the phone down and sipped her coffee, still lost in her thoughts. It took her a few seconds before she realised that Lena had entered the kitchen as well. The look on her face was hard to describe. She looked as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t bring herself to do it. The conflicted thoughts were clearly visible on her face.   
Alex didn’t question it further. Instead she wished her a good morning and disappeared back into her room with her coffee.

 

 

Lena stopped the car without bothering to park it correctly. Somebody else could do it later for her. She was already way too late home and she didn’t want to waste more time.   
When her assistant had informed her that the substitute babysitter had called in sick for the day, Lena had already been stressed out enough. But after that it had gotten even worse. First of all, she really had to find a new babysitter as soon as possible. But also, that meant that she had to move all her meetings to earlier in the day so someone was there to take care of Ellie once she would be home from kindergarten. So Lena basically ran out of her last meeting and didn’t bother to call her driver. She had enough cars in her garage and sometimes she missed driving them.

The CEO started panting as she hurried up the last few steps to the front door. It was unlocked and Henry would probably kill her if he knew that she’d forgotten to lock it again. She dumped her purse on the small dresser in the hallway and followed the voice she heard into the living room. She hadn’t even set one foot inside the room when she stopped dead as she watched the picture that unfolded in front of her. 

There, on the floor, sat Ellie, bent over a huge piece of paper and crayoning. Her little brows were crinkled in concentration. But that wasn’t what had made Lena stop, it was the fact that right next to her daughter, there was Alex, sitting on the floor and creating her own artwork.

“I wanna make the eyes green cause my mommy has green eyes,” Ellie said, reaching for the green crayon. Then she looked up and seemed to inspect Alex’s face.

“Your eyes are brown,” she eventually said.

Alex smiled at that. “I know.”

“None of my friends have green eyes like me and mommy, did you know that? I don’t know why.”

“That’s nothing bad, honey. It’s because you two are special.”

And maybe it was the fact that her usually so quiet daughter was opening up to someone other than Lena herself, or the fact that this seemed like the most normal thing to her, coming home to something so domestic, but Lena could feel how her heart skipped a beat and her world stopped for just a moment. There was a weird warmth that spread through her chest but before she could think about it any longer her daughter interrupted her thoughts.

“Mommy!” Ellie squealed and jumped up from the floor to hug her mom.

“Hey sweetie,” Lena said after a second, still not completely there. She picked her daughter up and pressed a kiss against her cheek.

“Did you have a good time drawing with Alex?” she asked with a smile.

“Yes! But you can’t look. I’m not finished!” And with that she wiggled herself free and Lena set her down. The little girl ran back to her crayons and her picture and it took barely a second before she was working with a concentrated face again.

Lena smiled as she watched her for a moment before she turned back to Alex, who had gotten up from the floor and was now standing next to her. She looked a little out of place, almost shyly staring ahead as if she’d done something wrong.

“I’m sorry for the trouble. The babysitter called in sick this morning and she’s already the backup so I didn’t have another backup,” Lena rushed to explain.

“I know, your assistant called me,” Alex said with a small smile on her face, before she added: “and it was absolutely no trouble at all. She’s a perfect little angle.”

“Still, it’s not your job,” Lena tried again, but Alex just shrugged with a smile and left the room. 

Lena’s eyes rested on her back until she was gone.

 

 

The next morning, Lena went down to the kitchen as slowly as possible. She was more than tired because for some reason she hadn’t been able to sleep all night. Her thoughts her circulating around her daughter and what to do without a babysitter. She even briefly considered asking Alex to take over some of the tasks but it seemed wrong to use her bodyguard like that. Still, Lena could see that after only a few weeks Ellie liked Alex better than any nanny she’d ever had.

Lena rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she poured herself some coffee which Rosa had already made earlier. One thing was for sure, Lena could live without a babysitter but she couldn’t live without Rosa.   
She turned around to get the milk from the fridge and stopped as she saw two new pictures hanging there. One was supposedly a princess with big green eyes in a rainbow coloured dress and the picture next to it showed a big castle on a hill. The later was clearly drawn by an adult and Lena smiled as she noticed the shaky brown lines, indicating a street for the princess to walk from one picture into the other.

“She asked me to put them up yesterday. Said she wanted to see if you would notice.” Lena turned around to see that Rosa had stepped into the kitchen with a bag of groceries.  
Lena nodded and finally opened the fridge to get the milk she’d wanted.

“She’s clearly underestimating me,” Lena chuckled. 

Ellie had done it before, swapping out her drawings to see if her mom would notice the difference. Of course, Lena had to admit that sometimes the pictures looked way too similar but still, she was happy about every single one she got.

She took a sip from her mug and leaned against the counter. Her eyes rested on the pictures again and she couldn’t fight the smile that crept onto her face.

“I’ll go wake her,” she eventually said when she woke up from her thoughts and went upstairs again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello you lovely people!  
> I hope you all survived SDCC and that you're ready now for some more family cuteness.

“Miss Danvers? Can I talk to you for a second?”

Alex walked back out of the bathroom into which she’d tried to escape. Chances were, she had done something wrong again and she really had no nerve for that today. Still, she put on a smile and expectantly looked at Miss Luthor.

The brunette smiled back and gestured at a chair opposite of the table. With a raised eyebrow, Alex sat down.

“What would you say if I gave you a 50% raise?”

“Uh… what the fuck?” Alex spluttered out before she could stop herself.

Lena’s friendly face changed into an annoyed eyeroll.

“I mean uhm… I mean I would say: why?” Alex tried to save the situation but clearly failed to do so.

“I was thinking about not hiring a new babysitter for Ellie and wanted to ask if you would take up that task? I finally decided to fire Miss Larson and instead of looking for someone else I thought I would ask you first. Of course, the substitute would still be available so you wouldn’t have to do it all on your own. You simply would have to spend time with Ellie in the afternoons until I get home from work. Your work hours would be increased and your payment as well, obviously.”

Alex didn’t answer right away. It didn’t happen every day that someone wanted to pay her so much money for doing something she enjoyed doing.

“I have seen you and Ellie together. She’s clearly fond of you and it’s hard to find someone she opens up to. And you seem to know what you’re doing most of the time.”

Lena’s voice suddenly shifted. She sounded unsure, as if she’d just heard her own thoughts out loud for the first time.

“You know I’m not a babysitter, right? I’m not trained to work with kids,” Alex answered after a few long and silent seconds.

“I know, but there are some things in life that you can’t learn. Some things that you’re simply good at. And believe me when I say you’re really good with her.”

Lena’s lips spread into a smile and Alex was taken aback for a second. It felt so foreign to be on the receiving end of Lena’s smile. There was a sparkle in her eyes that replaced the usually dark glare.

Slowly, Alex nodded. It would mean more work for her, but basically it was what she already did most of the days here but this time with payment. And she had to admit that she was starting to really treasure that little girl.

“If you’re interested, we can try it out for a week again and then you can decide,” Lena rushed to say. “You can also say no. I don’t expect anything from you.”   
There was something weird about her voice again. Something that seemed to slip through a lot more lately. It almost seemed as if she was… pleading? As if she didn’t want anybody else near her daughter but Alex. (Or she just didn’t want to start looking for someone else cause she was a busy woman, but Alex liked her first thought better.)

“That sounds like a plan,” Alex quickly answered before Lena’s face could fall even more.

 

 

Alex spent her morning reading through yet another binder about Ellie. This woman was definitely overprotective of her daughter but considering her public image, it probably wasn’t so wrong to be. There wasn’t even enough time to finish it before she had to go pick up Ellie from kindergarten. 

“Hey Ellie, how was your day?” she asked and took the girl’s backpack from her.

“I played outside with Theo. He’s so good on the jungle gym. It’s like whoosh and he’s on top already,” she giggled as she tried to show the sound with her hands. “I wanna be as fast as him.”

“I’m sure you will be soon.”

Reassuring her made Ellie smile even wider. She instantly grabbed Alex’s hand so they could walk across the parking lot.

“Is that a new car?” she asked when they stopped in front of a black vehicle.

“You know how my job is to protect you and your mom?” The little girl nodded. Her eyebrows were wrinkled in confusion. “Sometimes I change cars so that the bad guys are confused. Just like I always take a different way home.”

It took a few seconds before Ellies eyes got wide and she looked up with a smile. “Ohh, so they can’t follow us?”

Alex nodded and finally opened the car door for the little girl. “What would you say if the donut shop is on our route home today?”

“Yes, please!” The girl answered, her eyes shining bright. Alex smiled and continued strapping her in. 

She knew that she wasn’t supposed to give the girl so many sweets (or any at all) but today she somehow had to bribe her. There was still a chance that Ellie wouldn’t like the idea of Alex being her babysitter at all.

They arrived at the Luthor estate a while later. Ellie was carrying the large donut box and sprinted up the stairs. She instantly ran towards Rosa, who was cleaning the windows in the living room, and offered her a donut. Alex’s heart melted at the sight but she had no time to dwell on the cuteness because Ellie was already throwing questions at her about which one she should try out first. 

After they had all picked a donut and were happily eating, she decided that it was time to get the uncomfortable question out of the way. (She really had no idea why Ellie’s opinion on this mattered so much to her.)

“Hey Ellie? What would you say if you and me spend more time together today, is that okay?”

She received an excited nod in return. “I know you’re playing with me ‘cause Lauren won’t come anymore.”

That kid truly was too smart for her own good, Alex thought and smiled. “Oh, well yes that’s right. I’m the new Lauren kind of.”

“That’s so cool! You’re a way better drawer… drawyer… at drawing than her!”

Alex had to laugh out loud. If only all new jobs required criteria like this.

 

After making a puzzle together, which Ellie was surprisingly good at, they decided to go outside and enjoy the nice weather. Ellie was over at the swings, certain that she could do it herself this time (or so she had told Alex) while Alex sat down on the terrace and watched her for a while. She was about to go inside and get them something to drink, when she heard a weird sound and Ellie’s cry.  
Alex’s head snapped up to see the little girl lying on the ground. 

“Hey, honey,” she quickly jogged over and crouched down in front of the girl. “What happened?” 

Ellie pulled her arms around her leg, looking at the damage she had done. This was just perfect, her first day as a babysitter and she had already failed. Alex bit her lip, the most important thing now was that she handled this like a responsible adult.

“Come on let’s get that cleaned up,” Alex said when Ellie didn’t answer. Carefully, she lifted the little girl up and carried her inside. Ellie instantly nestled her head into Alex’s neck which made the woman stop for a second. She involuntarily had to smile. They had come so far since their first meeting.  
Ellie sniffled a little and reminded Alex that she was still hurt. They quickly went inside where Alex sat her down on the couch and got the first aid kit. 

“This is going to sting a little but you’re brave enough for that, right?” 

Quickly Ellie nodded and leaned forward so she could see what exactly Alex was doing. Alex dabbed some disinfectant on it, making the girl whimper and the sound felt like a stab into the heart to Alex. 

“Almost done, sweetie. You’re doing so great.” 

“What band-aid do you want?” Alex asked and held up a few of the options she’d found in the kit. After a quick thought, Ellie pointed at the one with the dinosaurs on it. 

“Good choice,” she smiled and put it over the knee. 

“There you go. As good as new.” 

“Mommy, always kisses it better,” Ellie mumbled into her hand. 

“Do you want me to kiss it better, too?”

Quickly, the girl nodded and then hid her face in one of the pillows.

Alex gave her a smile in response, leaned down and pressed a small kiss on top of the band-aid.

“Now it’ll heal in no time,” she said and Ellie nodded, too. She was already smiling again even though the tears were still smudged all over her face.

Alex couldn’t help it, she was a little proud of herself that she’d handled this so well again. She would never admit this in front of Miss Luthor, but this was perfect training for when she would have kids herself one day. She wouldn’t want Lena to believe that she only used Ellie for training purposes.

 

For the rest of the day they stayed inside. Alex let Ellie watch a movie and the girl was dancing all across the living room to the music while Alex watched her with a big smile on her face. That girl certainly had a lot of energy. 

She just finished her edition of whatever Barbie song that was (there were way too many for Alex to keep up), when Lena’s car came up the driveway.

“Mommy!” Ellie screamed and ran towards the door. “Come dance with me!”

Lena wasn’t even fully inside but she instantly dropped her bag and spun her daughter around. They laughed together and Alex’s heart warmed at that sight

“What happened to your knee, honey?” Lena asked with worry in her voice as she saw the band-aid. She picked her daughter up and then her eyes searched for Alex. The redhead was still standing behind the couch, not sure how to feel or act in that moment.

“I fell from the jungle gym but it’s okay. Alex kissed it better,” Ellie explained, but Lena’s eyes were still focused on Alex.

“She did?” Lena asked, but she didn’t sound surprised at all. More like she expected that answer.

“I know you said to always call you when there is an emergency but I didn’t think this was one?” Alex answered the question before Lena could even ask it.

“Okay,” Lena said after what felt like an eternity. After that, she sat Ellie back down and picked her bag up from the floor.

“Let me get changed and then I want to hear all about your day,” she said and bopped her daughter’s nose, who giggled and nodded excitedly. Both of them made their way upstairs and left a confused Alex behind.   
Was this it? No criticising her for what she’d done at all? No questioning her work in bandaging Ellie’s knee?

Alex let out a confused “huh” and sat back down on the couch. Maybe that was what progress felt like.

 

A few minutes later Lena and Ellie came back downstairs. Ellie was still talking excitedly about the day she’d had.   
When she saw Alex, who was still sitting in the kitchen, she ran towards her and the bodyguard instantly knew what the girl wanted. Alex held her hand up with a smile and Ellie jumped towards it, giving her a high five, then linking their pinkies and then pulling her hand away in a wave. It was a secret handshake Ellie had made up. Not that it was really secret as she showed it to basically everyone, but she had so much fun with it that Alex didn’t comment on it.

Lena only looked at them with a curious smile but before she could ask anything about it, Ellie was already talking again.

“Oh and Theo told me a joke! Wanna hear?” Without waiting for their answer, she babbled on. “How do ghosts keep fit?”

“How?” Lena asked with a smile.

“They exercise a lot!” Ellie said and then crinkled her eyebrows in confusion. “No, I said it wrong.” She put her hands on her head trying to think of it and Lena tried not to laugh at the sight. “No, no I know! They exorcise a lot!”

She expectantly looked at the women in front of her, who both answered with big grins.

“Theo can tell jokes so much better than me. He tells me a new one every day,” she pouted and crossed her little arms in front of her chest.

“Who is Theo?” Lena asked as she tried to comb through her daughter’s hair with her fingers.

“My best friend, mom!” 

And there was something about her voice that let Lena stop in her thoughts. It sounded almost as if Ellie had wanted to roll her eyes, like this was an obvious fact she should know.

“Does she talk about Theo often?” Lena quietly asked Alex as Ellie kept on rambling.

“Oh yeah, but don’t worry about it. I already checked his family, they’re all clear,” Alex answered with a smile. 

Somehow, that upset Lena only more. Her daughter had a best friend she regularly talked about and this was the first time she heard about him. Lena would never admit it openly but this hurt her more than she would’ve expected. She’d already tried cutting down her working hours but right now that wasn’t possible due to a big merger that would soon happen.   
She stood there and watched as Alex asked about another kid from kindergarten and Ellie started talking about them excitedly. Lena had no idea how that had happened to quickly or what she should do now. In that moment she felt more left out than ever.

 

 

_I need a drink tonight. Can you come over?_

Lena pressed send and leaned back against the couch to close her eyes for a second. She’d just brought Ellie to bed and read her her favourite story. So far Ellie didn’t seem mad at Lena for not having much time lately and Lena wanted to keep it that way. Still, she felt bad about it.

It took only a few minutes before she got a response: _Sorry, my mom’s visiting :/_  
and then _Can you manage without me?_

Lena sunk back into the couch and sighed. She could drink alone but she’d sworn herself years ago that she wouldn’t do that anymore. And until now she wasn’t at the point where she would break that promise. 

The ringing of her phone ripped her out of her thoughts and needed a second before she felt ready to answer it.

“Hey,” Lena sighed into the speaker.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked back. “You didn’t answer so I assumed that you can’t manage without me.”

“Yeah, no, I’m good.”

“Cut the crap and tell me what’s wrong.”

Lena smiled a bit at her friend’s forwardness. She could feel a lump forming in her throat and tried to swallow it down.

“Do you think I’m a bad mom?” she quietly asked after a few seconds of silence.

“What? Of course not! Why would you ever think that?”

“I- I don’t know. I just don’t have much time for Ellie lately and I feel like I don’t care about her enough.”

There was laughter at the other end and Lena was confused for a second.

“Do you even hear what you’re saying? That’s absurd! You care about her so fucking much!”

Lena was about to answer when she heard another voice in the back. It was probably Sam’s mom.

“I have to go but we’ll talk about it in the morning over coffee, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Don’t forget you’re an amazing mom. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” Lena answered and then the call disconnected.

 

 

It was the next evening and Lena was more than exhausted. She hadn’t been able to sleep the past night. She was constantly thinking about Ellie and how she could make more time for her. But of course, it was exactly now that she had so much stress at work. Sam tried her best to help Lena out (emotionally and with work) but it didn’t really take the weight off her shoulders.

Lena sighed as she got out of her car. This day had felt like it was going on forever. She sometimes asked herself why she had to deal with so many incompetent people in her place of work. One would assume that business people had at least a few brain cells but apparently that wasn’t the case. Today certainly gave her a headache.

“Hey mommy!” Ellie yelled the moment she stepped through the door, as always excited to see her. “I have something for you!”

“What is it? Another drawing?” she asked quietly and took the piece of paper out of her daughter’s hands.

“No, Miss Miller gave it to us today. Alex read it to me.”

Career day the headline read and Lena felt the need to roll her eyes. Any of the events at kindergarten where the parents were asked to be there seemed horrible to her. Of course, she wanted to present in front of her daughter’s class but she had no idea how she was supposed to fit this into her already tight schedule. And honestly, she didn’t quite know how she would perform in front of a bunch of four-year-olds.

“Hello, Miss Luthor,” Alex said when she stepped into the kitchen. “You’re home early.”

It sounded like a simple fact and not an accusation so Lena simply commented it with a nod.

“This sounds like a nice idea,” she said instead as she turned back to her daughter. “I have to see if I have time that-“

“Can Alex come with me?” And with that she wiped every other though right off her mother’s mind. “Her job’s protecting people and that’s so cool!”

It was silent for a second as Lena tried to find her words. Ellie was still looking up at her with a beaming smile on her face, clearly waiting for an answer.

“But your mom does pretty cool stuff, too,” Alex stepped in after a few too many silent seconds. She threw a nervous glance at Lena as she tried to find the right words. “She uhm… she works with people from all around the world and-“

“But I want to take you!” Ellie pouted and crossed her little arms in front of her chest. “Mommy’s job is boring.”

“No, honey,” Alex tried to save it and crouched down in front of the little girl. “Your mom-“

“Alex, please leave us alone.”

Alex looked up and was met with cold eyes. Lena’s lips were pressed into a thing line and Alex, who was still crouching down next to Ellie, had never felt smaller before in her life.

“I just-“

“Go. Now.”

Her voice was shaking dangerously and Alex did not want to be on the receiving end of Lena’s anger right now. She simply closed her mouth and got up from the floor. She knew better than to try and talk back to her. Lena could win any fight in the board and she was still her employer. She quickly left the kitchen without another word.   
She wasn’t sure what Lena had meant, maybe she was fired or maybe not, so she had no idea what she was supposed to do now. Alex simply grabbed her phone from her room and sat on a chair in the backyard to call her sister. It was a cold day so chances were low that Lena would come out here and she really didn’t want to stay in her way when she was about to be in a bad mood.

 

In the kitchen Lena was still trying to wrap her mind around the things that had happened. When Alex had suggested she work less and spend more time with her daughter a few days back, Lena had thought it was just a snappy comment. But now it all made actual sense. For the first time Ellie liked someone she had to spend so much time with so of course she would grow attached to them.

“I’m sorry mommy,” Ellie said in a small voice, her eyes cast down.

“Oh no, honey, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Lena instantly picked her up and kissed her cheek. “Mommy just had a hard day at work but none of this is your fault. Why don’t you go to your room and look for a book you want me to read to you tonight?”

And with that Ellie’s smile was back on her face and the little girl sprinted away to get her books. Lena let out a sigh. She had no idea how to fix this.

 

 

“Mommy?”

“Yes, honey?” Lena asked as she tucked the blanket closer around the little girl. Her dark curls spread all over the pillow.

“I don’t want you and Alex to fight.”

“We’re not fighting. I was just a bit sad for a second but everything is okay.”

Ellie slowly nodded.

“And if you want to take Alex to career day then that’s okay. I know she’s pretty cool.”

“No, mommy, I want to take you. Alex told me all the cool stuff you do!”

“She did?” Lena perked up at that. “When did you talk to her?”

“I went into her room when you were in the shower,” Ellie said with a proud grin.

“You sneaky little monkey,” Lena said and tickled her until she giggled loudly.

“But can I take Alex next time?”

“Of course you can, honey. But only if you sleep now.”

Ellie quickly nodded again and let Lena press a kiss to her forehead. “Goodnight, baby.”

 

 

Lena debated for a long time what she should do. It was obvious that what happened was nobody’s fault but especially not Alex’s. Lena groaned as her head hit the back of her couch. She was on her third (fourth?) drink and it still didn’t make her feel better. And now she was drinking alone after all but this day had really called for it.  
Eventually, she got up, took the half full bottle and went into the kitchen to get another glass. She hated apologizing but sometimes she had to do what was right.

“Hey, can I come in?” Lena opened the door just enough to look into the room. Alex was sitting on her bed. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it, instead she quickly nodded and muted the TV.

“I brought a drink if you want one,” Lena quietly said and held up a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.

“I’m not allowed to drink on the job but maybe I’m fired so yeah, sure.”

Lena poured some whiskey in a glass and handed it to Alex. Then she poured some for herself before she sat down on the edge of the bed next to Alex. 

“First of all, you’re not fired,” she said and took a long sip.

Alex didn’t seem very relaxed by those words. There was obviously more to come. The seconds ticked by in silence. The lights of the TV were flicking in the background. 

“I wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

“I understand that you’re angry. I can hold back and try to spend less time with her or-“ Lena stopped her by scoffing a little and when Alex looked up she could see that there were tears glistening in her eyes.   
She gulped heavily, what was she supposed to do now? She wasn’t prepared for the scenario of her employer sitting in her bed, crying.

“That girl loves you so much. Why would I take that away from her?”

Alex was at a loss for words so she quietly took a sip from her drink. Lena’s eyes were still shining wetly as she stared into her glass.

“It would only make me more of an uncaring mother,” Lena mumbled after a while.

“You are not uncaring. Not at all.” Lena threw a look at her that somehow didn’t get across this time, with her eyes overcast. She didn’t seem like the powerful woman she usually was.   
“I know I know, you don’t pay me for my opinion but you get it anyways.” She sat up further and scooted a little closer to Lena, so she could look her in the eyes.   
“Maybe you really don’t notice it but you care so much! You always want to hear all of Ellies stories even if you’re clearly already dead on her feet. You make time for her when you don’t have any. I mean, how often have you come home earlier from work so you could spend more time with her and then end up working again after she went to bed?”

At that Lena raised one of her eyebrows a little and looked back at Alex. The redhead just commented it with a small grin

“Don’t look at me like that. It actually _is_ my job to know this stuff.”

Lena smiled at her wetly and tried to blink away her tears before she downed the last of her drink. She stared away for a moment before she softly nodded her head. It seemed as if she was slowly accepting that Alex was right.

The redhead on the other hand wasn’t sure if Lena was really convinced that what she’d just said was true but hopefully she would soon realise it.   
However, Alex felt the deep urge to give her a hug, just to pull her in and hold her for a while because Lena really looked like she needed it. Like she needed to let go and relax just for once. But neither of them wanted to overstep.   
After all, Lena, even if she didn’t want to admit it, didn’t have much human contact other than from her daughter or when she was shaking hands at work in a while. To her, _hugging_ someone didn’t seem like a plausible option. And Alex was still only an employee and she’d just barely escaped being fired. 

Still, Alex couldn’t just leave it like that so she leaned over and softly slipped her hand into Lena’s. She squeezed it while looking into Lena’s eyes with something that was supposed to be a hopeful smile. 

Ellie had been right; they were an extraordinary green.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!  
> Quick life update: I'll move to Austria in a few days for about a month so I can't promise to keep my weekly updates but I'll try! I've been doing a lot of moving lately and it won't stop after that so yeyy. But don't worry, I won't leave you waiting too long. And for now: enjoy!
> 
> This shit is gay. Be prepared.

As every night, Alex was making her round around the property. She always tried to start at different times and changed the route she walked. It was the most basic thing she’d ever learned at the academy – no routines, because they would offer an easy target to possible attackers.

Just as she was nearing the front entrance again, she could see one of Lena’s cars entering through the gate but she knew for sure that Lena was already inside the house. At this time of the day, Henry was watching his show so it was possible that he’d simply waved the car through when he saw the license plate without paying much attention. Alex hoped for his sake that it wasn’t true. 

She quickly ducked into the shadow of the house and observed the car that slowly made its way closer to her. The engine got turned off and after a few seconds a woman stepped out of it. She was well dressed in a suit and heels. Her steps were fast and determined. But before she could even reach the few steps that led up to the front door, Alex jumped out of her hideout and pointed her gun to the woman’s head.

“Don’t move,” she said. 

The woman jumped a little in surprise which Alex found odd. If she really was a killer then she wouldn’t have moved a single muscle. But maybe she simply was a bad one.

“Turn around slowly. If I even see you flinch, I’m gonna pull the trigger.”

The woman didn’t even wait a second before she turned around so that Alex could finally see her face. Her brown eyes were ripped wide open, her shoulders tense and her knees shaking. She seemed oddly familiar to Alex.

“Who are you?”

“I… I’m Sam Arias. I work for Le-“

“What the hell are you doing, Alex?” A voice to her left screamed and Alex quickly turned to see a furious Lena standing in the doorway.

“My job?” Alex said but she already knew that this was the wrong answer.

“Put that gun down,” Lena snapped and stomped in between the two women.

Alex instantly lowered her weapon. She could see that behind Lena, the intruder – Sam Arias, apparently – didn’t seem any relaxed by that.

“Did you read the page in the binder about the people who have all time access on this property? Because it seems like you didn’t.”

There was a dark glimmer in her eyes that made Lena’s whole appearance even scarier. For a second Alex asked herself why she even needed a bodyguard if she could pull off this look.

“Yes, I read…” she sighed. There was no way of getting out of this. “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

Lena glared at her for a few more seconds before she stated a simple, “good,” and turned around. She took Sam’s bag and led her inside with a soft push.  
Alex sighed softly. Now she felt bad for scaring an innocent woman but she knew that justifying herself in front of Lena Luthor would probably make the whole situation worse. Instead she decided to walk another quick round around the house to cool off.

 

Inside the house, Lena softly pushed Sam onto the couch and returned seconds later with two glasses and a bottle of whiskey.

“You look like you need something stronger than wine,” Lena said as she poured the first glass.

Sam chuckled softly and let her head drop back. “I know you’re always talking about your security staff, but that’s not what I was expecting. At all.”

Lena nodded her head in agreement and took a long sip from her drink.

“I mean I almost shit my pants but damn, that was hot.”

Lena’s brain took a second to registered the words, but when it did, she instantly choked on her drink. She started coughing so bad that Sam quickly pat her back, while she was laughing loudly herself.

“You okay?” she asked after a few minutes, when the coughing had finally died down.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that?” Lena said with a raspy voice. Her face was red like a tomato and she quickly wiped her face with her sleeve.

“Yes, but you have to admit I’m right. She’s hot.”

“Can we talk about something different, please?”

The grin on Sam’s face spread even wider. Almost concerningly wide.

“Sure,” Sam said after a while and Lena had to admit that she had no idea what that look meant but it certainly wasn’t anything good.

 

 

A little while later Alex had finished her round and walked through the front door. She passed by the two women as quickly as she could, not even looking into their direction. She didn’t go unnoticed, though. That would’ve been almost impossible as she had to walk through the living room to get to the back part of the house where her room was located.  
Lena’s eyes involuntarily followed her until she disappeared behind the kitchen and into her room.

“I can’t believe it,” Sam whispered with her eyes widening in excitement.

“What?” 

“You like her.”

_“What?”_

“That makes so much sense! Normally, you fire all your employees after a few days if they make even the tiniest mistake not to mention if they pull off something like this. You’ve complained about her so often and she still works for you. And obviously, you look at her like that.” Sam finished her speech with a proud grin.

“I don’t like her,” Lena said with something that could be described as an annoyed pout. She leaned back and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I… I _appreciate_ her. She’s good at her job, usually, and she is great with Ellie.”

“Of course,” Sam mumbled into her glass, the grin still present on her face. 

“This has nothing to do with attraction.”

“Sure, Jan,” Sam said and winked. Lena seemed to get more and more uncomfortable. She nervously shifted around her seat and fidgeted with her hands. So, Sam decided to let it go for now. She sat up and poured both of them another drink. Lena sure needed it.

 

 

Until the next afternoon Lena successfully forgot about the conversation, she’d had with Sam. She’d just gotten home from work and walked straight into the kitchen to see Ellie sitting on top of the counter watching Rosa cook dinner. Lena had told her before that she didn’t think it was safe for her to sit there but it had somehow turned into Ellie’s favourite spot to watch what was going on in the kitchen.

“I already asked your mom and she said you’re old enough to choose your own birthday cake this year,” Rosa said as she added some cheese to the pan.

“Really?” Ellie asked excitedly, her eyes going wide.

Rosa nodded with a wide smile and Ellie excitedly started listing all the things she liked to eat. In that moment Lena walked over to them to save Rosa from the endless ramble.

“Hey baby,” she said and lifted her daughter from the counter.

“Hey mommy! Can I really pick my own cake?”

“Of course you can darling,” she answered with a smile, which prompted Ellie to continue her ramble. So far it seemed as if that birthday cake would consider of all things that included chocolate and nothing more.

Lena listened to them for a few more seconds. Which then reminded her that she still had to talk to Alex about the party. She combed through Ellie’s hair with her fingers one more time before she quickly made her way down the hall to Alex’s room.

She knocked and opened the door but before she could say anything, her words got stuck in her throat. 

There on the floor, right in front of the bed was Alex, doing push-ups in nothing but shorts and a sports bra. Lena lost total control over her facial features as she watched the muscles in Alex’s shoulders flex. Not only her shoulders, but her whole back was strained and covered in muscles. Her skin was glistening under a thin layer of sweat, indicating that Alex must’ve been doing this for a while now.

Suddenly, the bodyguard stopped and sat back on her knees, shaking the loose red hair out of her slightly sweaty and flushed face. She breathed heavily, chest rising and falling fast.  
Lena’s eyes were drawn to the movement. Her gaze wandered downwards to Alex’s toned stomach and what seemed to be a bunch of scars covering her right side.

“Lena?” Alex, who was suddenly standing in front of her, asked and judging by her facial expression this wasn’t the first time that she’d said Lena’s name.

It took a few more seconds until Lena was fully back in reality. She quickly shook her head and couldn’t help the blush that spread on her cheeks.

“Sorry, I got distracted,” Lena rushed to say and cleared her throat a few times. “I’m here to ask if we can sit down and talk about Ellie’s birthday next week. There is no rush, I just want you to have enough time to prepare whatever you have to prepare.”

“Yeah sure, we can do that whenever you’re free,” Alex answered with a smile and reached over to her bed to grab her towel. She then quickly wiped her face.

“Sorry, for the… uhm the state that I’m in,” she said with a chuckle and Lena was already thinking about _thanking_ her for looking like this but she could barely withhold herself.

“You know you can actually leave the property on the hours that you’re off?” Lena asked instead. “Go to a gym or something.” 

She still couldn’t help but stare a little. But what was she supposed to do? She was just a woman after all. A woman who hadn’t been on a date in years. And every blind man could see that Alex was indeed attractive. But this had nothing to do with attraction. She wasn’t attracted to Alex, Alex was just an attractive person. Sam had been completely wrong on that matter.

“I know and I will actually make use of that. I’m going out for brunch tomorrow.” Alex’s voice ripped her out of her daily self-justification. Lena had gotten lost in her inner discussion that she didn’t even remember her initial question and it took her a few seconds before she had sorted her mind out.

“I don’t want to keep you away from that fiancée of yours. I don’t know how you keep up a relationship like this anyway.”

The more words came out of Lena’s mouth, the deeper got the frown on Alex’s face.

“I’m not engaged.”

 _Well, that was fortunate._ “Oh… but in your file-“

“I called off my engagement recently. Guess they haven’t updated my file yet.”

“I’m sorry, I thought… I heard you talk to someone on the phone a few times…” she slowly trailed off. Lena had no idea where she had intended to even go with that sentence. Usually, she was better at controlling her mouth.

Alex stiffly nodded. “Probably my sister. She calls me a lot.”

And with that she left the room into the direction of the bathroom. It seemed as if she wanted to escape this topic and Lena could understand that. The wound was definitely still fresh and by the looks of it, Alex wasn’t ready for anything new.  
Lena had wanted to ask this question for weeks now, but it never seemed quite right and now she felt almost bad for it. But now that she had the information that she wanted, she had no idea what to do with it.

Lena felt the need to punch herself. Maybe she should really go out on a date if it would only mean that she would stop being so confused about matters of her heart. There was no way she would admit that Sam had been right, because she hadn’t been.  
But Lena couldn’t help it, she was relieved to hear that Alex wasn’t taken and that worried her more than she would ever admit.

 

 

“And please call me! Even if you have nothing to tell. I just want to know that you’re okay,” Kara said before she pulled her sister in for yet another bone crushing hug. 

“I’ll do that. I promise,” Alex answered into her shoulder.

Kara smiled at her once again before she quickly made her way down the street and back to work.

After Kara had asked over and over again, Alex had finally agreed to meet up for brunch. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see her sister, not at all. She actually missed spending time with Kara but with her crazy work hours Alex didn’t have much time for her personal life.  
Also, she had become just a little paranoid whenever she had to let Ellie out of her eyes. That had never happened before. She usually didn’t grow so attached to clients. But somehow it took only one little girl to throw all professionalism over board.

Alex sighed and made her way to her car on the other side of the street. From now on she would actually spend more time with Kara, even if it left her with a worried feeling in her stomach. She unlocked the car but before she could get inside something else caught her attention.  
At the kiosk at the side of the road a familiar face was looking at her from a magazine cover.

 

 

It was later that evening; Alex was skipping through a magazine with what could be described as the worst articles in history. She almost scoffed at the title _Beach Horror_ and kept on reading with pure disgust at whoever had written that.  
It was a photo series of Lena in shorts and a big sunhat, carrying her daughter to her car. They were probably from last summer, judging by Ellie’s size. Big red arrows were pointing at Lena’s thighs, calling her out on her cellulite amongst other things.

“Please tell me you’re not actually reading that,” Lena said as she entered the kitchen and threw only one look at the magazine.

“I’m doing research, obviously.”

Lena leaned over Alex’s shoulder and threw another look at the page. Her brows furrowed and if Alex had to describe it, she would say that Lena looked almost sad? But that wasn’t possible. One of the most powerful women of this country couldn’t be taken down by some stupid article, could she? She’d gotten worse comments than that and usually they did absolutely nothing to her.

Lena took a step back, trying to find something else to do. Alex’s eyes followed her curiously. It didn’t happen often, that she got to see Lena like this. In moments where her strong façade cracked and threatened to break apart. It wasn’t a good look on her.

“You know what the worst thing about this is?” Alex asked instead of all the other things she wanted to say.

“That people actually pay money for this?” Lena said back, her voice shaking a little. Alex still couldn’t believe it. She had no idea where Lena’s usual attitude had gone.

“It’s women who write articles like this. And I bet they all have stretch marks and cellulite as well.”

“I bet they all look like you,” Lena mumbled, more to herself than anything else. “With not an ounce of fat and perfect skin.”

It took a second before she looked up and realised that she had said this out loud. A blush spread over Lena’s cheeks as she busied herself with making coffee.  
There was an uncomfortable silence laying over them, and for what felt like forever, nobody said anything. 

Then Alex got up from her chair and started pulling her shirt up. Lena’s eyes went wide as a perfect set of abs got revealed. Until now she’d barely gotten over the last time, she’d seen Alex shirtless and she definitely didn’t feel ready for another time.

“Are you…” she gulped heavily. “Are you trying to prove a point or something?”

“Yes, actually,” Alex answered and turned to the side. There were many angry red scars, even more than Lena had first noticed. They crossed all of Alex’s right side and disappeared below her waistband. Some of them were bigger than others but they were all clearly present from a distance. 

“I got hit by a bomb a while back. Nothing major, really, but I have these scars now. And maybe they are not pretty but so what?” She let her shirt fall back down and looked at Lena expectantly.

“But this is something different,” she said in a small voice.

“Yeah? How so?”

“They stand for something. They show that you’re brave and… and that you’re strong.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Alex answered with a smile and started unbuttoning her jeans. 

Lena had the feeling she would pass out so she gripped the counter even tighter. She had no idea if all of this was really happening right in that moment. It could be a dream after all. Wouldn’t be the first time that she dreamed of something like this and also not the first time she dreamed of Alex…

Alex pulled her pants down at the side just enough for Lena to see the stretch marks that were visible across her hip.

“And what do they stand for?”

Lena breathed in heavily, her face was still a deep red and she was afraid that it would never go away again.

“Okay okay, you win,” she said and rolled her eyes in the process. She wouldn’t say out loud that she still didn’t feel better about her own body. But she understood Alex’s point and she really appreciated her doing this. 

(Even though she was sure that it would take forever to get these images out of her head. Possibly until the end of time.)

A wide grin spread on Alex’s face as she pulled her pants back up. “I like the look of stretch marks, you know? Especially on tanned skin.”

“I’m the furthest from tanned you could possibly be.”

“I know, I just wanted to emphasize my point here,” Alex answered with an eyeroll and finally closed the magazine and dropped it into the trash. 

Lena smiled and took a sip from her coffee which was almost cold by now. It probably wasn’t the right time to start a discussion about her body. She had never been insecure about it, having a few pounds more had been totally fine until she’d found herself in a gossip magazine for the first time and had cried her eyes out about it all night. At that time, she’d barely been 18 years old and there was so much pressure from her family already pushing on her shoulders. It hadn’t gotten better after that because then there was her pregnancy and no matter what she did, she couldn’t lose the last few pounds.  
Now, Lena tried to blend it out most of the time, but sometimes it all caught up with her. The fact that she forgot to eat all day when she was stressed but her weight still remained the same only made her feel bitter.

It took a long time before she realised that she was alone in the kitchen, Alex had already left and she hadn’t even realised it. Lost too deep in the one problem that actually hit her deeper than only a scratch at the surface.

 

 

It wasn’t until later, when she was lying in her bed, that the image crept back into her thoughts. 

Lena smiled into her pillow and imagined how she reached out to touch soft skin, slowly running her fingers over these angry scars. It was the most unprofessional thing she could possibly do. This was her employee after all! But she pushed these thoughts deep down and for now let herself dream. Of strong hands and a soft smirk and maybe Alex would unbutton her pants again for her before she had to wake up in the morning.

 

 

Rosa had left todays mail on the kitchen table for her. Lena quickly looked through them. Bills, bills, something about her insurance, she stopped at a letter that had her name and address in handwriting on them. Her heartbeat quickened in an instant. There hadn’t been any new letters for weeks now and Lena had been stupid enough to assume that they had stopped once and for all. She rushed to put the others away and opened it. 

The first thing she noticed was the familiar ‘Hello Lena’ written in bold red letters. The second was the biting smell. 

Instantly she dropped the letter onto the table and took a few steps back. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.

“Alex?” she yelled, her voice shaking. “Alex!” she yelled again, the fear making its way through her whole body.

“What’s wrong?” Alex came into the kitchen, her gun in her hand and a concerned look on her face.

“Stop! Don’t come closer!”

Alex stopped instantly. She had no idea what was going on but she’d never seen Lena so scared before.

“I opened this letter. I think it’s poisoned. It smells really bad and is burning in my nose and throat,” she stated with a shaking voice.

“Get away from it!” Alex immediately answered. “What does it smell like?”

Lena took a few more steps back from the table.

“Uhm… I don’t know… vinegar?”

“Vinegar… vinegar,” Alex mumbled and closed her eyes for a second. Lena was about to yell at her to hurry up when she ripped her eyes open again.

“Hydrofluoric acid!” she shouted, “Did you touch it?”

“Yes?”

“Come over here,” she said and waved Lena away from the letter that had landed in the middle of the kitchen table. Once she was close enough Alex grabbed her by the waist, shoved her towards the sink and pushed Lena’s hands under the cold water.

“Anywhere else you touched it? Did you scratch your nose? Anything?” she asked, already pulling out her phone to call an ambulance.

“I don’t think so,” Lena answered. “But I breathed it in.”

“I know that’s why I’m calling an ambulance.”

Alex gave the operator at the other end their info before she called Henry in the guest house and told him to come immediately.

“Alex?” Lena’s voice had gotten quiet, her eyes slowly filled with tears. “It burns.”

“Hands or airways?”

“Airways.”

“Okay we’ll get you outside,” she reached for a towel and wrapped it around her hands. “Try not to touch anything with your hands yet.”

“Someone has to get Ellie! She can’t go anywhere near the kitchen,” her voice still panicked but she was almost whispering by now.

In that second Henry stormed through the door with his gun in hand. “What happened?” 

Alex just made a grunting noise. They had no time for this.

“Henry, go watch the kid. Don’t let her in the kitchen or anywhere downstairs.”

“But you’re responsible for the kid and I-“

“I don’t care! Go!”

And with that she pushed Lena past him to get her outside.

“Okay Lena, keep breathing. Even breaths or your lung might collapse.”

“What!?”

“Shit, sorry,” Alex cursed herself. “Uhm… you’ll be okay.”

The sirens got louder and Alex couldn’t imagine a better sound in that moment. She continued to half push, half drag Lena forwards. If Lena hadn’t been in such a state of deadly terror, she would’ve laughed at Alex’s inability of being reassuring. But at least she was clear and focused while Lena was freaking out next to her. 

Aaron came running towards them asking to help just as the ambulance arrived. Alex told them what had happened while they loaded Lena into the back.  
When they pulled and oxygen mask over her face, she visible relaxed but Alex knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet. She told Aaron to ride with them to the hospital and before she could watch them drive away, she made her way back inside.

Alex pulled her shirt over her nose and opened every door and window she could find to let the toxin out as much as possible and then she finally called the police.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me researching poisons and acid at 2am. Not a psychopath, just a writer. (At least that's what y'all are supposed to think.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!  
> Because so many of you asked, here is another quick life update: I'm doing great over here in Austria! I'm so happy every time I look out of the window and see the mountains. And it seems as if my inspiration came back! After my first day at work I literally wrote the plot to an entire story. Would anyone of your read an Agentcorp tourist/souvenir seller story? (Inspired by my life just in gay.) Doesn't matter, I'll write it anyway.
> 
> Moving on... here is the newest chaper! I couldn't let you guys wait that long after the latest cliffhanger so you'll get this chapter now but there won't be one next week as I have to try really hard to find time to write. But for now, please enjoy :)

It was early in the morning when Lena and Aaron arrived at home. They had told her she should stay the night at the hospital but she didn’t want to stay away from her daughter even longer. Not after a day like this.  
Lena slowly made her way upstairs, the exhaustion seeping through her whole body.

“Hey,” someone said and Lena almost fell the stairs back down. “Shit, I know I’m not allowed to talk to you in the dark,” Alex said with an apologetic smile on her face.

“What are you doing here?” Lena asked after the initial shock had worn off. It was rather unusual to see Alex upstairs, but there she was, sitting in front of Ellie’s bedroom door with a flashlight and a book in her hands.

“I wanted to be close to her just in case and also I waited for you to come home.”

Lena was taken aback by the sudden softness of Alex’s voice and by the absurdity of it all. The fact that someone cared about her even after their work hours seemed interesting to her.

“What did the doctors say?” Alex asked and got up from the floor.

“You were right with the poison,” she said and started chuckling. “Hydrofluoric acid. I don’t know why I couldn’t come up with it myself.”

“Maybe because you’d been _poisoned_ and were fearing for your life?”

Lena just shrugged a little and tried to suppress a yawn.

Alex looked at her with a content smile. “Okay, you go to bed and in the morning, we’ll talk about the letters. Yes, I know, letters plural. And you’ll tell me everything. Understood?”

Lena sighed, there was probably no sense in fighting back. And also, it had been just a matter of time before Alex would’ve found out about the letters anyway. So, she simply nodded and went into Ellie’s room to check on her before going to bed herself. 

“I’m glad you’re okay, though,” Alex softly called after her. She gave Lena another smile before she went downstairs, leaving Lena confused about her feelings once again.

 

 

Alex woke up early that morning. She decided against going for her morning run and instead went into the kitchen to make coffee. What she found was the chaos the police had left the past night. She made a mental note to offer Rosa help in cleaning everything up later. 

After slowly nursing her cup of coffee while calling her boss for any updates on the case – nothing new yet – she decided to check on Lena. It was already fairly late in the morning and she wanted to make sure that everything was fine.  
On the stairs she met Ellie, who was climbing her way downstairs all on her own. Without thinking about it much, Alex picked her up and carried her down, making the girl giggle loudly.

“I heard Rosa is outside on the swings all on her own,” Alex said as she sat Ellie down. “Do you want to go join her?”

Ellie’s answer consisted of her nodding with her whole body before she sprinted off to get her shoes. With a smile on her face, Alex followed to help her tie the laces.

 

Once the kid was taken care off, Alex made her way upstairs once again. She softly knocked on the door to Lena’s room. There was only a soft yawn coming from the other side.

“Hey can I come in?”

Lena nodded, her face half hidden beneath her pillow. She looked so soft and fragile that Alex had a weird urge to hold her close and tell her that everything would be fine.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up but we need to take a blood sample and send it to the lab to make sure you aren’t in immediate danger anymore,” she sat her bag down at the foot of the bed. “And I thought I could take it so you don’t have to drive all the way to the hospital again.”

“I need coffee,” Lena grumbled and sat up in her bed.

“Blood first, then coffee.”

Lena looked up at her with a frown on her face before she answered. “Fine, just let me go to the bathroom first.”

She slipped out from under the covers and made her way to the bathroom, only slightly shaky on her feet. Alex had to resist the urge to walk over there so Lena could lean on her.

 

Lena looked up to meet her own eyes in the mirror. She looked like hell. Well, she’d been through hell so maybe that was it. She splashed some cold water into her face, trying to fight her sleepiness but it didn’t help so she gave up and simply walked back into her bedroom where Alex was waiting with a medical kit. A sympathetic smile was spread on her face and Lena was almost sure that it was because of her distraught appearance.

“You do have a medical degree, right?” she asked when she sat down on the bed again.

Alex chuckled softly, “No, I just take a lot of heroin so I know how to use a syringe.”

Lena’s only response was a disapprovingly raised eyebrow, which she could flawlessly pull off even under these circumstances.

“I know, it’s too early for jokes. But to answer your question: yes, I do have a medical degree. Otherwise I wouldn’t do this.”

Lena nodded. For some reason her mouth felt too tired to talk much. Her whole body felt tired and if she had the chance, she would sleep for three days straight. It felt as if her senses didn’t fully belong to her again and she hated that.

“Where is Ellie?” Lena asked after a long silence.

“She’s outside teaching Rosa how to swing correctly. She’s cute when she’s bossy. That’s definitely your daughter.”

Alex told the story with a smile and Lena nodded along, trying not to think about the needle in her arm. At least the pain helped her feel a little more awake and aware of the moment.

“Okay, you’re all done,” Alex said a few seconds later and pulled the needle out. “I’ll send Aaron to take this to the lab and then we’ll have the results in a few hours but I don’t think you suffer from any kind of subsequent damage.”

Lena nodded slowly and rolled her sleeve back down before she got up and followed Alex downstairs. Slowly, of course, because she felt as if she would trip and fall down every second. 

“Can I have coffee now?” she asked as they walked into the kitchen and the smell of fresh coffee hit her.

“Yes, but we’re going to talk about the letters.”

“Really? I might still be dying so we should wait until I’m stable enough physically.”

Alex slid a mug across the table and looked at her as if she wanted to say ‘Really?’

“Fine, we’ll talk about it,” Lena mumbled after a few seconds. “What do you want to know?”

“For starters: How long have you been getting death threats?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been getting threats all my life,” she shrugged and took a huge sip of coffee. “From this particular person for about a year now.”

“A year!? Why didn’t you tell me?” Alex exclaimed and the sudden loud voice made Lena jump a little. “Or if this has been going on for that long then why don’t your bodyguards know about it either?”

Lena knew the answer to that question, she simply didn’t want to share it with Alex, or anybody for that matter. She didn’t want anybody to worry about her because in the end it wasn’t worth the trouble so why would anybody bother?  
She looked up at Alex who was still staring at her with concerned eyes. Lena shrugged her shoulders and something made this answer final because Alex sighed and leaned back in her chair. It was silent for a few seconds, Alex’s worried eyes were still roaming over Lena’s face, trying to find the meaning behind all of this.  
After a few seconds, the redhead leaned against the table again, obviously trying her luck with a different question.

“What makes him, or well… them special?”

This was a question she could actually answer. At least something.

“The way the letters are written seems almost intimate and personal. Not just the usual ‘die bitch.’ They’re well thought out and entirely weird.”

“Do you have any idea who could be behind them?”

Lena shook her head and took another sip of coffee. “It could basically be anybody.”

Alex sighed. This wasn’t working out the way she had planned. But they would catch whoever was behind this. That she was sure of.

 

 

It was late and as always Alex took her walk outside. There was something oddly calming about walking in the dark, surrounded by silence and only sounds of nature. It was unbelievable that this place was only a quick drive away from the city centre.

She looked up to see that the lights were still on in Lena’s office. She knew it was past midnight already and Lena had been running around all day already. Alex had forbidden her to go into work after the attack and to her surprise Lena had actually listened to her. More or less, because Alex knew for a fact that she had been in her home office for hours. Her work-life balance was far from healthy.  
Without giving it a second thought, Alex got inside and made her way upstairs. Softly, she knocked on the office door so she wouldn’t disturb Ellie in the next room.

“Lena?” Alex asked and opened the door enough so she could see through. The woman was sitting at her desk, starring at her laptop, her chin resting in her hand. She turned around and looked at Alex with tired eyes and slumped shoulders.

“What can I do for you, Alex?”

“I was walking outside and saw that the light was still on in here. I know it’s not my place to say, but you should go to bed,” she said and leaned against the door frame.

“I’m just finishing up these reports. I can’t-“

“No, you look like you’re almost dead so go to sleep. You can do the rest in the morning.”

“You make great compliments,” Lena said with a raised eyebrow. “I’ll just finish this and then-“

“I can see from here that you wrote the word situation three times in a row,” Alex argued before Lena could even finish her sentence and gestured at the computer screen. 

The brunette turned around to take a look at it and cursed herself for making this mistake. But after a short inner debate she sighed and nodded. Alex gave her a smile and wished her a good night before she made her way back downstairs.

 

For some reason, she didn’t believe that Lena would actually go to bed when she was told to. Alex was still wide awake and so she decided to check up on Lena again.

This time her knock was unanswered but there was still light shining through the crack of the door so she went inside. And there was Lena, her head resting on her arms, fast asleep on her desk. Alex rolled her eyes. This was so typical. But what was she supposed to do now? The woman looked so peaceful that Alex didn’t have the heart to wake her up again. Also, maybe she would just go back to work as stubborn as she was.  
Instead, she took the blanket that she found on the windowsill and softly put it over Lena’s shoulders before she closed the laptop and turned off the desk lamp. There was still enough light coming in from the hallway to see how Lena scrunched her nose a few times before sighing in her sleep. Alex’s lips spread into a smile and her eyes rested on the sleeping figure for a moment longer before she turned around and quietly closed the door.

 

Only one day had passed and Alex suddenly found herself in the same scenario again. It had been another tough day as they all had been questioned by the police multiple times and Lena was still a little out of it from the antidote. 

The light was still on and after debating back and forth Alex decided to go upstairs. Lena was fast asleep with the head on her keyboard. A grin crept on Alex’s face and she drew in the sight before her for a moment before she tried to softly shake Lena awake.

“Hey Lena? You need to go to bed.”

The sleeping figure made a grunting noise which made Alex smile even wider.

“Come on, this is bad for your neck and the rest of your body.”

Lena blinked an eye open just to close it again quickly. “’M too tired,” she mumbled into her arms. “Carry me?”

Alex wasn’t sure if she’d heard that right. She stopped for a second looking at Lena who seemed to have fallen asleep again after her question. Then Alex made a decision. She crouched down and slid one arm behind Lena’s back and one under her knees, careful, so that her head wouldn’t hit anything. Then she picked her up, (with more effort than she would like to admit) and carried her into the room next door.

 

 

Lena blinked against the rays of sunshine that were making their way into her room almost aggressively. She tried to pull the blanket over her head once more but that only helped for about 5 seconds.

“Mommy! Wake up!” she heard the muffled cry and only seconds later she felt the bed dip down and her daughter climbing on top of her.

“Oh god where do you get all that energy from, huh?” Lena answered as Ellie sat down on top of her chest and pulled the blanket from her face.

The girl giggled, showing off her newly missing front tooth. Lena quickly sat up and in doing so threw her daughter off her. The response was only more giggles. 

“Mommy, did you forget to put your PJs on?” Ellie asked when she had finally recovered from her giggles.

Lena looked down on herself and saw that she was still wearing her blouse from the previous day, which was now horribly crinkled. That also explained the stabbing feeling on her chest; she couldn’t remember the last time she had slept with her bra still on.

“I guess I was too tired last night,” she said more to herself, still not quite sure what had happened. “Come on, honey. Let’s get some breakfast.”

Ellie cheered and quickly climbed off the bed. Lena followed after her, but stepping out in the hallway she paused. The door to her office was still gaping wide open, which was weird because she always made sure to close it. It was so she could prevent Ellie walking in there as she loved to literally draw on every single piece of paper she could find. Even on Lena’s important contracts. Lena went over to close the door and suddenly her memories crashed back in.

“Oh god,” she whispered to herself and her eyes got wide. Had she really asked Alex to carry her to bed? And had Alex really done it?! This couldn’t be true.

Lena felt as if she was having a heart attack and a stroke at once. She would never be able to look Alex in the eyes again. This was way past humiliating.

“Oh god,” she whispered once again.

 

 

It had been a long day, Lena had just changed out of her office attire into her comfortable clothes when she heard the front door getting smashed close. She quickly went downstairs.

There she was met with her crying daughter, who ran right into her and sobbed into her stomach.

“Hey, what happened?” she asked and crouched down to hug her.

“A- Alex w-was mean to Theo’s dad and… and… and now I can’t play with him again,” she snivelled into her mom’s neck.

Lena looked up at Alex with a confused look. The bodyguard seemed tense, more than usual. Without a word she disappeared down the hall into her room.

To say Lena was confused would be an understatement. She still hadn’t found the time to apologize to Alex for what had happened the previous night but it seemed as if that had to wait a little longer. First, she had to calm down her daughter before she could think of anything else.

 

Lena knocked on Alex’s door, that had been left a tad open. She looked inside and saw Alex anxiously walking around. Lena leaned against the doorframe and watched her for a moment, concern written all over her face.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Alex stopped and looked at her. “It was a simple misunderstanding. I’m sure Ellie and Theo can still play together.”

“Okay,” Lena said and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “As your boss I want to know what happened on the job while you were with my daughter.”

Alex sighed and dropped down on the bed. “He touched me and I overreacted and might have broken his wrist. I know I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry but-“

“Okay wait a minute,” Lena interrupted her and sat down next to Alex on the bed. “First I want to know the full story and then we can talk about it further.”

Alex sighed, letting her shoulders slump in the process. But then she nodded. She couldn’t get around this either way.

 

_“So, you’re not her mom?”_

_“No, I’m just the babysitter.” Alex had decided to leave the word ‘bodyguard’ out of this, as it scared some people at first and also not everybody needed to know that right away. In retrospect it would’ve been smart to not do that._

_“Babysitter, huh?” Theo’s dad – she’d forgotten his name after only two seconds - laughed and Alex couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable in his presence._

_“Why don’t we let the kids play here for a while and I can show you around?”_

_“No, thank you,” she answered. If there was one thing she’d taken forever to learn at the academy, it was how to stay calm around people that made her want to scream. This guy’s sleazy personality made her want to puke._

_“You know, my wife isn’t home.”_

_Alex’s mouth dropped open. Why couldn’t some people just behave like decent human beings?_

_Suddenly, there was a hand on her ass and within a second Alex was holding the guy down to the floor. He screamed in pain as she bent his wrist backwards. She hadn’t even intended to do that, it simply was a natural reaction of her body._

_“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked him but all he answered were slurs mixed with screams._

_“Don’t grope women, ass,” she spat and let go of him._

_“Get the fuck out of my house! Now!” He screamed and got himself up from the floor. Alex was already walking over to the two kids, who were standing not far, looking at them in shock._

_“Come on, Ellie. Grab your stuff.”_

_“I don’t wanna go yet.”_

_“We have to,” Alex tried to say but Ellie crossed her arms in front of her chest and took a step away from Alex._

_Theo’s father made his way towards them. He was still yelling at them clearly scaring the little girl, if the look on her face was any indication. Therefore, Alex simply picked her up and grabbed her shoes from the hallway. Both hands full, a pouting child in her arms and a furious man behind her, she had to admit she wanted to scream back._

_“You’ll hear from my lawyer, bitch!” The man yelled after her._

_“Yeah, good luck explaining the sexual harassment to them.” And with that she got into the car and drove off. She felt a little bad for Theo, that she had to leave him behind with his angry father. She simply hoped his anger was only directed at her and nobody else._

 

Alex finished her story without showing any signs of emotion on her face and looked at Lena for the first time. She was clearly waiting for the brunette to say something. When Lena showed no intentions to do so, Alex started to speak again.

“I did the right thing in defending myself, but I shouldn’t have done it in front of the kids. And maybe I shouldn’t have just carried Ellie out like that but it is what it is.”

“Yeah, no, it was right to get her away from there. I’ll talk to her about it.” Lena got up from the bed and looked at Alex with her eyebrows still furrowed. “Your reaction was completely right and it’s important for my daughter to learn to speak up about stuff like this.” Then she sighed and her face got soft. “But maybe we can wait a few more years until we tell her how shitty the world really is?”

Alex smiled at Lena’s use of ‘we’ and also at the defeated look on her face.

“I guess for now you can just let her be a kid.”

Lena nodded with a soft smile spreading on her face before she turned around to leave.

“And thank you,” Alex called after her. “For understanding and not firing me. Again”

Lena rolled her eyes with a smile and went out of the door without another word. She barely reached the hallway before she stopped herself and went back.

“Hey Alex?” she asked as she stepped into the room once again. The bodyguard was still sitting on her bed, looking up at Lena with wide eyes. “I just wanted to apologize for what happened the other night. It was entirely unprofessional of me and it won’t happen again.”

It took Alex a second before she realised what Lena was referring to but when she did, her eyes widened and her cheeks turned a soft pink. She got up from the bed and started fidgeting with her hands again.

“Oh, uhm… that’s no problem, really,” she opened her mouth and then closed it again, looking at Lena sheepishly. “Or maybe I should apologize?”

She looked so torn that Lena was about to laugh at it.

“No, you don’t need to apologize. I’m really thankful that you care for me like that. It means a lot to me.”

The words slipped out before she had the chance to stop herself. She hadn’t meant to phrase it like that.

Before Alex got the chance to answer, Rosa walked in with a laundry basket in her hands. She stopped instantly and looked at them with raised eyebrows. Her eyes flicked between the two women and it was only now that Lena realised how close they were standing to each other.

“I’m sorry,” Rosa eventually said and backed out of the room, eyebrows still raised. And Lena couldn’t help but think that Rosa knew something they didn’t.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!  
> I'm sorry it took me so long to post this chapter but work leaves me really stressed and I still had to write a paper for uni. But now that that's finished I should have more time to write.  
> So here is the newest chapter!   
> (Lena might be a bit out of character in this one. Or maybe not, I dont know. I just hope it makes sense at all)

“You look horrible.”

Lena looked up from her coffee mug and raised an accusatory eyebrow at Sam, who was standing in the doorway. “Well, thank you.”

Sam was probably the only person who was allowed to say something like this to her. 

“Okay, tell me what’s wrong,” she said and sat down opposite of Lena.

“The investors called, they want to reschedule the meeting again so it might take longer for us to-“

“Yeah, I don’t care. Tell me why you can’t sleep.”

“You don’t care about the future of our company?” Lena asked and gulped the rest of her coffee down. It burned her throat but she didn’t find the time to care about it.

“You’re more important,” Sam said with a smile and Lena could feel her shoulders relax at these simple words.   
It was good to know that she could always count on Sam to be there for her. But still, she didn’t know what to say. It had all taken a few days until everything caught up with her and she truly realised what had happened. A few days until sleepless nights and endless thoughts were finally too much for her to handle. She’d been poisoned in her own house. A place where she usually felt safe. And in a wrong moment it could’ve been her daughter with her in the room, but Lena didn’t even want to go there in her mind. So yes, she looked horrible because these thoughts kept her up at night. They hadn’t caught the person who had done it yet, which was one of the worst things about it.

Rosa had come to her the other day, her face covered in tears as she apologized over and over again, after she’d realised that she’d been the one to leave the mail in the kitchen. She swore she couldn’t remember seeing any suspicious letter. Lena knew that Rosa blamed herself, which she couldn’t quite believe, because even though Alex put every single person she knew on the list of suspects, there was no way that it could have been Rosa. Not with the way she was so devastated of possibly helping in the process of hurting Lena.

“What are you doing here anyway?” Lena asked as she finally came back from her daydream. She knew she should be more concerned when people just randomly entered her house without anybody noticing. Good thing Sam wasn’t just people.

“I told you I was coming over for brunch on Saturday and as far as I know it is Saturday,” Sam grinned and got back up from her chair. “And now tell me about your problems while I make food.”

Lena sighed and leaned back in her chair. Why was it always so hard to form her problems into words? 

“You know just the usual. Some people hate me, some try to kill me,” she shrugged a little. “I’m just tired of it all.”

Sam turned back to the table and set to glasses down. “Food is served.”

“Are Mimosas a nutritional alternative for real food now?” Lena asked as she wearily eyed the glasses.

“Yes, now drink up and keep talking. I get payed by the hour.”

 

 

It was an hour later, more than one bottle of champagne had been emptied and the two of them had also actually consumed real food. Just as they stopped giggling for longer than a few seconds, the front door opened and they could hear Alex’s voice in the hallway.

“I know, I know,” she said to someone on the phone, while kicking her shoes off. Sam and Lena involuntarily grew silent, not wanting to listen but also not wanting to say something instead.

“But I just bought expensive lingerie for no reason so I need sex now so someone can see it.” 

At that Sam spluttered out in laughter, making Alex turn around towards them with shock written all over her face.

“Oh shit, I’ll call you back later, okay?” she said into the speaker and quickly hung up. “Uhm… hi, sorry, that was unprofessional,” she muttered mostly to herself. “I just wanted to say that we’re back now. Obviously. Ellie stayed outside to help Rosa water the flowers.”

And with that she quickly hurried away, trying to hide the blush that spread all over her face.

The second she was gone, Sam started giggling again. Lena had been silent so far, which was rather unusual for her but there was also a noticeable blush on her cheeks. Her mind had certainly wandered off to a different place…

“Okay honey, here’s the deal,” Sam started and downed the rest of her Mimosa. “If you don’t ask her out, I will.” 

“You’re not even gay,” Lena shot back within a second. 

“I would make an exception for her.”

Lena answered Sam’s smug grin with a loud groan.

“If I ever see you walking out of her room in the morning, I will fire you. And end our friendship. And get you kicked out of the country.”

Sam leaned back in her chair, a huge grin plastered on her face. Obviously, there was no sign that she felt actually threatened by Lena’s words. 

“You’re in that deep, huh?” 

Lena sighed and threw one look over her shoulder to make sure that Alex was really gone. 

“I may have… feelings for her,” she eventually admitted but before Sam could respond anything Lena continued. “There is more to that. She’s still a woman and I’m a person in the public eye. I don’t know if I’m ready for that step yet.”

“I’m not telling you to have a public coming out and a big gay rainbow wedding,” Sam answered and Lena smiled at the thought. “I just think you should get yourself out there and go on a date with a smoking hot woman.”

Lena sighed once again and rested her chin in her hand. As if it was that easy. 

“I’m not even sure she’s gay,” Lena said but she knew herself that it was a poor excuse. Her gaydar might not have been that advanced yet but there was no way that Alex wasn’t queer. As far as she remembered from the file it had even said that her fiancée had been a woman. So yeah, even though Alex had never officially told her, Lena was sure that she liked women and that made the whole situation even more complicated. (Or easier if you asked Sam.)   
In that moment the front door opened again and with fast steps Ellie stormed into the kitchen, spreading mud all over the floor.

“Look Mommy!” she yelled. “I have a flower for you.” She held up a small, clearly shaken up sunflower.

“Thank you, honey! It’s beautiful.”

She took the flower from her daughter’s hands and placed a soft kiss on her head. “Come on, let’s get your shoes off first and then we’ll find a vase.”

Sam watched them with a smile on her face. As they left the kitchen, she got up too, to start cleaning up a bit. And to make a plan, of course. They had been interrupted but there was no way that Lena was getting out of this again.

 

It had taken Sam barely 24 hours to arrange a date for Lena and honestly, she wasn’t surprised. Also, Sam had been clever enough to schedule the date for the same evening so that Lena had no chance of backing out. They had more or less agreed that Lena would go out with someone to get back into it. To see “how dating in this century works” or at least that was the way Sam had phrased it. 

Lena sighed softly before she closed her closet doors and went outside to enjoy the afternoon sun a little longer. She could think about an outfit later, maybe ask Ellie to pick something. But then she still had no idea what to do about Ellie. If she should tell her about going on a date. So far, she’d never had to have that talk with her, something Lena was very thankful for.

“I heard you have a big date tonight,” a voice interrupted her thoughts.

Lena looked up to see Alex casually leaning against the door frame. She somehow had this effortless coolness that this move needed.

“Rosa?”

“Yep,” the bodyguard answered with a smile. “She almost blurted it out on front of Ellie, which is why I wanted to ask if she knows about you dating. Just so I don’t accidentally tell her.”

Lena sighed, this was incredibly considerate of her. Again. How dare she make this whole thing harder?

“Honestly, I have no idea if I’m even going.”

At that Alex smiled and sat down on the garden chair next to Lena, telling her without words that she was ready to listen. The brunette’s eyes wandered back to the jungle gym, where Ellie was trying to climb up the fireman’s pole. She sure had a lot of power in that little body.

“How can I even think about dating with everything that is going on in my life? I’m getting death threats and I live with three bodyguards. Let’s not even talk about the fact that I’m a single mother who is also running her own company and who has no personal life because for that a day would need more than 24 hours.”

Alex listened to Lena’s rant with an amused smile on her face.

“You said it yourself: you have no personal life so why not get one?”

“It’s not as easy as that.”

“I know, but sometimes in life you have to make it easy for yourself,” Alex said, now with a serious expression on her face. “Go out tonight, have some fun and worry about anything else afterwards. Who knows if you even want to see them again? Then you would’ve wracked your brain all for nothing.”

“Stop being so smart,” Lena answered quietly, causing Alex to grin widely. Lena hated that it made her heart flutter.

 

And maybe Lena was just a teeny tiny bit sad that Alex seemed to have no problem at all with her going on a date. If the roles were reversed, Lena would’ve been devastated. (And she was a little scared to even admit that to herself.)

 

And maybe that was the reason why she decided to go in the end, even if she really didn’t want to.

 

 

Alex was sitting on the couch in the living room once again. Somehow, she liked being here more than inside her room. It made her feel better that the open floor plan provided sight of the front door and the staircase, so she hardly would miss anybody that came inside.

Just as she thought about finally going to bed, she heard a weird sound coming from outside. Slowly she got up from the couch and moved towards the cabinet at the wall, where she kept one of her guns in the safe. Just as she walked back into the direction of the hallway, the front door opened with a small creaking sound. It was too dark for Alex to see anything, but the footsteps seemed soft and slow, far from Lena’s usual clicking heels and power walk.

“Hands where I can see them!” Alex said calmly when she felt the intruder come too closer for her liking.

“Fuck, Alex, it’s me.” 

After a few too many seconds, Alex eventually found the light switch at the wall, illuminating the hallway. And there was Lena, blinking against the sudden brightness. As it seemed she’d walked here barefoot, only dropping her heels now that she was inside.

“I need a drink,” she mumbled and walked into the kitchen, only throwing one weary look at the gun in Alex’s hand. With a loud sigh she grabbed the bottle of whiskey out of the freezer and poured herself a glass. She looked at it for a second, then up at Alex, and then she turned around to get another glass.

“I’m on the job,” Alex said as Lena slid the glass over to her.

“Who cares?”

And with that she knocked the whiskey back, only slightly pulling a face. It was silent for a few seconds. Neither of them said anything. The clock on the wall softly ticked in the background.

“It was a horrible idea. I blame you. And Sam. Both of you.” 

“Okay,” Alex answered and finally took a sip from her drink as well. “Tell me about it. Was something wrong with the guy?”

“I felt nothing for that guy, literally nothing. As if I’m dead inside.” She opened the bottle again to pour herself another drink. “He’s good looking, we have shared interests and he was a perfect gentleman.” She sipped on her drink, mumbling another ‘nothing’ under her breath. 

It was her own fault. After all she’d asked Sam to set her up with a guy because getting back into dating after years was scary enough but having a date with a woman… that was something for next time. If there would ever be a next time.  
Alex looked at her, completely lost at what she should do or say, so she simply finished her drink in silence.

“Maybe I should just give up trying to prove myself that I’m bi.”

If Alex was surprised then she didn’t show it. She simply offered Lena a comforting smile, encouraging her to go on.

“Have you ever had feelings for a guy? Or wanted to have sex with one?” 

“Well, no.” 

“Then why do you lie to yourself?” 

Lena only sighed at that. She couldn’t look Alex in the eyes, not after what she’d said. It all was true. She’d known it for a while now but ignoring her feelings had always worked out for her. 

“Did I ever tell you about Ellie’s father?” she asked instead of answering the question.

Alex only shook her head, unsure about what would follow.

“It happened because of a one-night stand. I was in college, confused about… well basically everything. I think I was trying to prove to myself that I’m straight and ended up still not-straight and pregnant,” she chuckled a bit before taking another sip from her drink, staring into the distance. “At that time, I thought I had made the biggest mistake possible, but now… She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I created this beautiful person and… and I’m not sure why I still cling onto the believe that I will find my true love in a man.”

Finally, she looked up from her glass again to meet Alex’s eyes. They were as soft and caring as ever and Alex offered her a small smile.

“You know, you could tell Ellie and she would understand. Children are incredible openminded before their parents mess them up.”

“I want to make it as easy as possible for me and for Ellie. Obviously, I’ve told her that being gay is an option, that’s not the problem. But the media would rip me apart. They already do it and I can’t imagine what happens if even more paparazzi show up here.”

“If you ask me, then your daughter will learn much more of you if she sees that you’re happy with who you are. And who cares about the media. Everyone is gay these days.”

“Are you?”

A cocky smile spread on Alex’s face and Lena couldn’t say if she loved it or hated it. The redhead knocked the rest of her second drink back and got up from the chair.

“Of course,” she said, and even though Lena knew the answer already, hearing Alex say it made her chest feel warm in excitement.

 

 

“Alex!” Ellie yelled and Alex stopped to turn around once again. “This is for you!”

She handed her a card that was overflowing with glitter and Alex’s lips spread into a smile. “An invitation to your birthday? Thank you, of course I’ll come.”

Ellie squealed in delight. This card had clearly been written by Rosa as Alex had helped her with all the others and according to Ellie it would have ruined the surprise if she had to write a card for herself. Alex couldn’t agree more. Ellie kept on rambling about her party tomorrow and how much fun she was going to have with her friends. Alex listened to her while the grin never left her face.  
Lena wouldn’t admit it out loud, but with everything that had happened she’d almost forgotten about that party again. She truly was the worst mother sometimes.

“Do you have everything under control?” she asked Alex once Ellie ran off to pick out a dress. “I mean, with the party and the security checks and-“

“Of course,” Alex answered with a smile. “I checked all the guest including families, I’ve got a x-ray scanner from my friend over at the FBI to look into all the presents without opening them, Aaron, Henry and I will be here the entire time and Ellie won’t even notice a thing.”

Alex finished with a smile. She knew just how tired Lena had been lately and therefore had organised it all without even questioning it. Lena deserved the sleep Alex knew she wasn’t getting.  
Lena didn’t know what to answer and she also didn’t know what she would do without Alex. The redhead gave her another smile before she went over to Ellie to help her clean up the mess of glitter she’d left in the living room. Lena stayed back, watching the two of them for a while.

And once again Lena hated that Sam had been right. There was no way Ellie would have a problem with her dating Alex because as of now they already were their own little family. Alex could be Ellie’s mom and nothing would change.   
“Oh god,” Lena mumbled and shook herself out of it. She should think about asking Alex out before she should think about marrying her and making her Ellies mom and maybe they would have another child and-

Lena forced herself to stop and quickly went to the bathroom to splash cold water into her face.   
She took a deep breath right before the cold water hit her face. It seemed to shake her awake a little. The brunette looked up to meet her own eyes in the mirror. She’d no idea how she’d gotten here.   
Being confused about her feelings and what to do with them seemed so unlike her. Lena took a deep breath once more and dried her face off with a fresh towel.   
She usually didn’t listen to her friend in terms of relationship advice (or any advice for that matter) but somehow this time it felt as if Sam was right. She had been out on a date and she hated it so now she had two options. 

1\. Go back to not dating at all or 

2\. Actually ask Alex out. Alex, the woman she liked as more than just a friend or an employee. 

And the second one seemed so unrealistic that Lena really couldn’t imagine herself doing it. She sighed and looked at Alex and Ellie talking with each other excitedly. It was then that Lena decided that after this birthday she would choose one of the options. 

She was excited herself to see which one it would be.

 

 

The day of the party came faster than expected and Lena still felt overwhelmed with how many things were going on in her head. But Alex had assured her over and over again that she had everything under control and that Lena should have fun with her daughter. Lena truly didn’t know what she would do without her.

“You can relax Lena,” Alex said with a soft nudge against the brunette’s tense shoulders. Lena let out the breath she’d been holding and tried to relax a little. 

“Sorry,” she said out of habit. “I’ll go help Ellie unwrap her presents. Do you want to come?” She expectantly looked at Alex, who nodded quickly.

“Yes, I’ll be right there. Just give me a second. I see Theo’s mom over there and I still need to tell her that she should get a divorce.”

She left with a smirk on her face and Lena finally felt herself relax as she let out a small laughter.

 

After a few minutes of walking around and cleaning up wrapping paper, Lena’s eyes wandered over to Alex once again. She was wearing this pair of tight black jeans again and why did it have to be today that Lena’s stomach couldn’t get itself under control?

“I can’t believe you actually came,” Alex suddenly squealed and Lena looked up to see her happily throwing her arms around the blonde who’d just arrived.  
Lena could feel the way her throat tightened up and she had to gulp her anger down. Why did Alex bring someone? And why did it have to be this really gorgeous woman?

Instead of mopping around, Lena did what she had to do. She went over there to confront them. Her best business look plastered on her face.  
Alex saw her walking over and greeted her with a smile.

“Ah right, Lena this is my sister Kara, Kara this is Lena Luthor,” Alex said.

“Of course I know who you are,” the blonde – Kara – said with a wide smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You too,” Lena said and shook her hand with a soft smile, when all she could hear was sister sister sister. 

“I hope it’s okay that I’m here,” Kara said and ripped Lena out of her thoughts once again. “Ellie actually invited me.”

“She did?”

“Yes, it said so on my invitation,” Alex jumped in, smug smile plastered on her ridiculously beautiful face. “That I should bring my sister because, and I quote, ‘she sounds like a cool person.’”

“I mean, that’s true, I’m pretty cool. But that also means that you talk about me a lot,” Kara said and grinned at her sister.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” Alex answered and shoved her a little which resulted in them both giggling.

Lena watched the scene before her with a smile. She couldn’t help but be a little jealous of their relationship. She could never imagine being this close with her brother, giggling with him about something. It was a surprise he hadn’t tried to kill her lately, probably because he was in prison, but still, their relationship had never been better. But it would never be like this. And to no one’s surprise, Lena was actually sad about it. 

After introducing her sister to Ellie, who had been way too excited about the donut shaped pillow Kara had gotten her, she had sent them both into the direction of cake. Alex couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the excited looks on both their faces. Kara and Ellie were way too much alike.   
The redhead smiled and started to look around again as she almost bumped into a tall man. He’d just walked into the backyard with his daughter following behind. 

“Hi there! I hope we’re not late for cake,” he said with a grin.

“Cake is this way,” Alex answered and pointed at the terrace. “And the birthday girl is running around somewhere.”

The man thanked her and walked off into the direction of Lena, who was helping Rosa with the cake. But somehow Alex had the feeling that something was wrong here. She pulled out her phone to look through the invitation list again to see who this person was.

Only seconds later Ellie came running over towards her and started pulling on her shirt. “Alex?” she asked with big eyes.

“What is it, honey?”

“I don’t know who that is,” she whispered and pointed at the girl who had just arrived and was still trailing behind her father. 

“Okay, honey, stay here,” Alex answered, already on her way. 

She jogged the last few steps towards the man before she reached out to grab his wrist. He gasped in pain and turned towards her with a shocked expression.

“Come with me, don’t make a scene,” she hissed in his ear and dragged him towards the back door of the house. Once inside, she shoved him against a wall, making him wince once again.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“I’m here for the party,” he answered with a shaky voice.

“What’s your name?” Alex asked and pulled out her phone.

“Martin Smith.”

“Your name isn’t on the list,” Alex answered after a few seconds of scrolling. “So either you tell me who you really are, or I’m going to call the cops and have you arrested in front of your daughter. You wouldn’t want that, right?”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest, leaning back with a dark smile.

The man sighed, his shoulders falling down.

“I’m a reporter with Celebs Today I’m just here for a Lena Luthor at home and personal story.”  
Alex sighed and rolled her eyes. Just what they needed right now. 

“Go outside and grab your daughter. You have two minutes to disappear.”

Quickly, the man nodded and basically bolted out of the door.

“Everything okay?” Lena asked as she saw Alex step back outside.

“He’s just a reporter so no threat and no need to worry.” She smiled at Lena before she got back to Ellie to tell her that these two had been at the wrong party and there was no need to worry.   
Lena smiled at them from the distance, but it was a sad smile. Once again, she realised exactly how complicated everything would be if she was dating Alex. How complicated it would be if only her stupid feelings would get stronger. Then she would have to find a new bodyguard who was just as good as Alex and was also getting along with Ellie. A task that seemed impossible. 

And as she watched Alex and Ellie talk excitedly to each other, she realised that one of them would always be unhappy. And Lena would rather be unhappy for the rest of her life than cause her daughter any pain. But she was a business woman and failing without trying was no option.  
She couldn’t feel anymore torn if she wanted to.

 

 

Today was the day. Lena had made a decision and she would do it before she could think otherwise. There was no turning back now. She simply needed to stay calm and gather her thoughts before she did anything else.

“Alex? Can I talk to you for a second?” The words rolled out of her mouth before she had the chance to stop herself. Lena would punch herself if Alex and Ellie weren’t looking at her curiously right now.   
Alex even seemed a bit worried, which, who could blame her, was understandable after her own week long icy-ness. Instead of saying more, Lena just shot her a hopefully natural smile to tell her that she had nothing to worry about.

Alex got up from the floor and ruffled Ellie’s hair once more. The girl let out a loud giggle and Lena felt her knees get week. What was this thing about Alex that she made her feel this way? This couldn’t be right. She didn’t get nervous around people and she certainly wouldn’t start now.

“This might be a bit unprofessional so feel free to stop me anytime,” Lena chuckled. She honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so nervous of something.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked, instantly realising her distress and Lena hated her for it. Hated that these soft brown eyes made it only harder for her.

She cleared her throat once more and sat back in a professional manner. 

“I was wondering if you’d like to-“

But she didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence before the loud ringing of Alex’s phone interrupted her. Lena was tempted to just smash it with her fist. How dare she be interrupted now that she finally had the confidence that she needed?

“Sorry, this is my contact from the NCPD. I need to take this,” Alex explained with an apologetic smile before she picked up the phone, not bothering to walk a few steps away.  
She listened closely to the person on the other hand. Her face visibly got harder with every passing seconds.

“Okay, thank you. I’m on my way.” She ended the call and got up from the chair, clearly in a hurry to get out.

“What’s wrong?” Lena asked and followed her into the hallway.

“They finally found a match to the fingerprints on the envelope. It was Lauren.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!  
> I'm back from Austria! I literally got home a few hours ago and decided that there was still enough time to finish and edit this chapter so here it is! Also fun fact: I'll only be at home for two weeks before I move to England for 6 months. So yeah, my life is crazy right now and therefore updates could be infrequent.  
> But for now enjoy this mess of Lena's emotions!
> 
> (The second half of this chapter goes out to Lillil40. No idea if that's what you wanted, but you get it anyway)

Alex started the motor and was about to pull out of the garage when the passenger door of her car opened. 

“You didn’t honestly think about leaving without me?” Lena asked in an almost snappy manner.

Before Alex could answer, Lena had already dropped into the passenger seat and was now making a call to her assistant to reschedule all her meetings for today. Alex sighed and started driving because there was no sense in trying to argue here anyway.

 

Only fifteen minutes later they arrived at the police station and Alex instantly got out of the car. She was about to hurry inside when she remembered that she still had Lena with her, who had been completely silent the whole time.

They walked inside, Alex strolling ahead as if she owned the place. A move Lena had not seen on her before and if she wasn’t so distracted by the actual problem they were facing, she definitely would’ve gotten weak in the knees from the sight.

“Hi, Alex Danvers, I’m looking for Detective Vasquez? She’s expecting me,” she said to the woman at the front desk.

“Is she with you?” the woman asked and pointed at Lena.

“Yes, Lena Luthor, the victim so she needs clearance as well.”

The woman nodded and typed something into her computer. It only took a few seconds until she handed them both visitor IDs and pointed them towards the elevator.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked once the doors of the elevator had closed and they were alone. Suddenly, her defensive armour had dropped and she looked worried. 

Lena started to nod but then stopped herself and thought for a second. “Actually, no. I’m as far from okay as I could possibly be.”

She looked up to see the redhead looking at her with soft eyes and she hated that a few hours ago she would’ve done anything for Alex to look at her like that. Now it mostly seemed like pity and that was the last thing she wanted. 

“Did you tell Aaron or Henry that you took me here?” she asked to change the topic.

“No, because I didn’t even plan to bring you here. You could’ve told them that you left.”

Lena just shrugged nonchalantly, “We’ll see how long it takes them to notice that I’m gone.”

And Alex knew this was a serious situation but she couldn’t help but let out a small laughter which resulted in a small grin spreading on Lena’s face.

The elevator doors opened again and they were greeted by a small woman with short hair and a serious expression on her face.

“Hey Vasquez, thanks again for calling,” Alex said before she introduced her to Lena. There was not much time for formalities.

“We’re almost ready to start, you can go in,” she told them and pointed at a door to their left.

Alex and Lena found themselves in a small dark room with a two-way mirror. On the other side of it sat an extremely nervous Lauren.

Lena’s face instantly hardened at seeing the babysitter again and Alex had the strong urge to take her hand and tell her that everything would be okay.

Only moments later Vasquez stepped into the room and sat down at the opposite side of the table. She opened her file and skipped through a few pages before looking directly at the other woman.

“So why are you trying to kill Lena Luthor?”

“What? Why? No!” Lauren jumped a little.

“We have reason to believe that you left a letter containing a toxin for Miss Luthor in her house.”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Your fingerprints were on the envelope and you’re one of very few people who even own a key to the property.”

The ex-babysitter squirmed in her seat, probably thinking about how she could get out of this situation. 

“If you confess now it’ll look better in front of the judge,” Vasquez continued and it was almost ridiculous how fast Lauren broke.

“Someone hired me to do it. He offered me a lot of money and I needed it to pay my bills,” she eventually said with a defeated sigh.

“I was supposed to watch Miss Luthor and her kid and report everything back to him. Their schedules and all that stuff. He told me a while back to get a replica of the keys and that I would need them but I didn’t know for what.”

She looked scared and honestly, Alex didn’t feel any form of sympathy. She’d never liked Lauren which she didn’t hide, never had. But it made sense now, what other reason to stay in a job where you had to work with kids even though you didn’t like them, other than blackmail and poison your employer. 

“He texted me to meet me at the park that morning, handed me the envelope and told me to leave it inside the house.”

“That man, what does he look like? Does he have name?”

“No, I don’t know. He’s in his forties maybe? Tall and white but he usually had sunglasses and a hood on so I can’t say for sure.”

“Anything else that could be important? Anything?”

She thought for a second before she shrugged. “I think he hates Miss Luthor but he is clearly obsessed with her daughter, like he always talked about her in a weird way. If you ask me, that guy is crazy.”

 

Lena gulped heavily but the lump in her throat wouldn’t leave. Seeing her admit all of this made the situation seem so real. She let out a shaky breath, a little too loud because Alex turned to look at her. Lena kept staring straight ahead, not wanting to seem weak.  
Slowly, a warm hand slipped into hers and squeezed tightly. Lena felt her breath hitch but she kept staring ahead and so did Alex. The bodyguard didn’t need to see the slow tears that made its way down her face. 

They stood in silence for a few moments until Vasquez came back to tell them that she needed Lena to fill in some forms.

The young Luthor dropped Alex’s hand, wiped away the rest of her tears and walked out of the room without looking back.

Alex’s heart broke for Lena, but she had no idea what to say or do to make her feel better.

“So, we know nothing more,” Lena said as Vasquez had filled her in on what would happen next.

“But we’re one step closer to catching him,” Alex told her and reached out to slowly rub her arm, but then she dropped her hand again when she saw Lena’s face. “I mean, at least we know it’s a him.”

Lena didn’t answer, she simply blinked her tears away and pulled her shoulders back.

“I need to go now. I’ll pick up Ellie from kindergarten early. I need to know that she’s fine.” She looked at Alex with cold, professional eyes that the redhead hadn’t seen for weeks and it worried her a little. She could literally see how Lena’s walls rose back up.

“Are you coming with me?” 

Quickly, Alex nodded and followed her outside. She had no time to worry about it now. It would have to wait until later.

 

After a short discussion, Lena let Alex drive the car on her way to kindergarten. She got inside and told Ellie’s teachers something about a family emergency before walking back outside with her daughter.

Ellie was confused for a moment, but also it was right before nap time so the little girl fell asleep in the car before she even had the chance to ask what was going on.

The ride home was silent but it wasn’t only because of the sleeping child. It wasn’t a peaceful silence; it was tense and Alex wished she could do anything against it.

 

Lena opened the car door and unfastened Ellie’s seat belt. She tried to pick her without waking her, but her legs were shaking too much in the heels she was normally so familiar with.

“I’ve got her,” Alex, who had suddenly appeared behind her said. 

It didn’t even take Lena a second before she stepped aside and Alex saw it as a great compliment that she didn’t question her. The bodyguard picked the sleeping child up and rested her against her shoulder. Lena watched them with sad eyes but a small smile before she followed them inside.

“I can put her in your bed if you want and then you could also sleep for a little while.

“I can’t sleep,” Lena answered as she closed the car door behind them.

“Then you go and rest. You really need it.”

Lena sighed but didn’t answer, but when she went upstairs and didn’t come back down for almost two hours, Alex assumed that she’d actually listened to her.

 

It was later in the day, Lena had actually taken a short nap with Ellie right next to her and she could say that she felt better now. Not good but better.

Ellie had wanted to know why she had to leave kindergarten early and Lena couldn’t come up with a better excuse than to say “I’ve just missed you so much.” It wasn’t entirely wrong, though and it seemed good enough for Ellie.

So now she and Ellie were sitting at the kitchen table, making a farm animal-puzzle, when Alex walked in. The redhead watched them for a while before she made herself some coffee and also handed Lena a mug. She accepted it with a soft smile and then turned back to her daughter. Alex smiled back before she pulled a chair back and sat down on the other side of the table. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt but we still have to talk about the fundraiser next weekend.”

Lena’s eyes flicked up to her, looking at her with confusion in her eyes. But it only took two seconds before she groaned softly and sunk back in her chair. How did she forget about that? It was one of the most important events of the year and whenever her assistant had talked about it, Lena had thought that it was still a few months away. With everything happening she had lost complete control over everything. She couldn’t do it anymore. She just couldn’t.

“I’m done!” Ellie announced proudly as she put the last piece in its place.

“Good job darling,” Lena said and gave her daughter a high five. “Do you want to do another one?”

Ellie quickly nodded and jumped down from the chair to pick out one of her many puzzles.

The second she was gone, Lena got up and went over to her liqueur cabinet. Alex, who had stayed silent until now, breathed in as if she was about to say something but then she simply got up and followed Lena. 

The brunette quickly poured herself two fingers of whiskey and downed them in one go. Alex looked at her with a worried frown but Lena didn’t care. So maybe all the day drinking slowly turned into a problem but who was Alex to judge? She had no idea what was going on in Lena’s life. Or she did, but it didn’t affect her the same way it affected Lena.  
Before she had time to pour herself another one, the bottle was taken out of her hands.

“This is enough,” Alex said as she forcefully put the lid back on.

“Give it back.”

“No.”

“I’m your boss.” 

“I don’t care. Fire me if you want but I’m not letting you ruin your life with this. Take it from someone who has been fighting a drinking problem for years. It’s not pretty and it’s also not going to solve your problems.”

Lena stopped, slightly taken back. She didn’t know that about Alex and something in her brain told her she should have. She looked up to see Alex’s soft eyes. It looked as if Alex was about to move in to give her a hug. Before Lena could think about it, she slipped away and put her empty glass in the dishwasher.

“Fuck,” Lena mumbled under her breath. And suddenly she felt like crying again. “Can you please leave me alone? We can talk about the fundraiser later but please not now.”

The redhead looked at her with concern written all over her face. Then she slowly nodded and walked away.

When she was finally gone, Lena sat back down at the table to clean it up for the next puzzle Ellie would want to make. She was still trying to keep her tears at bay and she hated it. She hated that Alex made her feel things. She hated that her walls just disappeared every time she talked and she hated that Alex just knew her so damn well. She hated it all.

 

 

Alex didn’t bring up the fundraiser again until the next day. It was Saturday so that meant no kindergarten for Ellie and no work for Lena. Well, usually she would work anyway, but lately Sam and her assistant Jess had combined forces to keep her out of the office as much as they could. And while Lena loved to work to distract herself, she wasn’t unhappy about it at all.  
She didn’t have any plans for that day other than maybe enjoy the nice weather and then Alex had come and asked if they all wanted to go to the park so they could talk while Ellie could socialise with other kids. Lena had been hesitant to being out in the open with Ellie but she also knew that she couldn’t lock her daughter up in their home so she agreed.

They drove to a different part of the town to a smaller park that Lena had never been to. 

“My sister lives right around the corner so I’m familiar with the surroundings. And Henry is watching us the entire time. No need to worry,” Alex explained with a calm smile and it made Lena feel at least a little more relaxed. Ellie on the other hand was overly excited and not even a little bit worried about anything. She kept running circles around their legs making Alex laugh and even Lena genuinely smiled.

They had only walked for a minute when a stranger approached from the side. “Well would you look at this cute gay family,” the woman said and Lena instinctively took Ellies hand and pulled her closer. It made Ellie look up at her with big eyes before she hid behind her mother’s leg. Lena looked up to Alex but instead of stepping in, the bodyguard just rolled her eyes.  
“How is it with two moms?” the woman asked Ellie with a smile. “Is it twice as awesome?”

“Shut up, Lucy,” Alex huffed before she went to give the woman a tight hug. “Uhm… this is my friend Lucy. I’m sorry for her bad behaviour, I really don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

“First of all, I’m your _best_ friend, and second, you know damn well that I’m perfect and that you love me,” she answered with a big grin before she turned to Lena to shake her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Lena said slowly, even though she wasn’t so sure if it was really nice to meet her. And she was still unsure about what that comment about the gay family was supposed to mean. Did people think that when they saw them walk down the street? Was the media already on this topic? Oh god, she needed to call the PR department and-

“Lena?” 

Her inner monologue got interrupted by Alex, who was looking at her with a concerned frown.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Lucy asked if she can treat us to some ice-cream.”

Alex pointed right behind them, where Lena could see an ice-cream truck.

“Can I please have some?” Ellie suddenly asked in a small voice. It was the first time she had spoken since Lucy had arrived and only now, she was slowly letting go of Lena’s leg again.

“Uhm yeah, sure.”

At that, Ellie started jumping up and down again and pulled her mom towards the ice-cream truck. Alex and Lucy followed right behind them (and Henry too, in the distance).

While Lena let Ellie look at all the flavours, and declare that she wanted all of them, she turned around to make sure Alex was still right behind them. On the one hand, because it made her feel safer to know that she was right there, and on the other hand, because she didn’t know what to think of Lucy just yet. She was rather small with dark hair and bright eyes and Lena hated to admit that she was quite beautiful. And what made it even worse was the way Alex was smiling at her. They were bickering about something and Lena couldn’t quite get the context. The way Lucy touched Alex’s arm made her stomach turn. Lena had to restrain herself from slapping that hand off of her Alex. Not that she was ‘her’ Alex but-

“Are you okay? This is the second time that you’ve completely zoned out.”

Lena internally slapped herself. How did it happen again?

“Oh yes, I’m fine,” she said. Both Alex and Lucy were looking at her in a weird way and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

“I’ll go sit down with Ellie over there,” she said once she and Ellie got handed their ice-cream and threw a few bills at the man in the truck.

“I said it’s on me,” Lucy tried to argue but Lena was already gone.

 

“Damnit,” Alex mumbled and inspected the drop of melted ice-cream that had just landed on her shirt.

“Wait, I got it,” Lucy said, pulled a tissue out of her pocket and started rubbing that spot. Probably harder than necessary.

“If you wanted to touch my boobs you could’ve just asked,” Alex said and rolled her eyes.

“Excuse you, there is a kid present. I would never.” But then she winked and laughed at Alex who just shook her head with a smile on her lips.

Lena watched them from the bench she was sitting on with Ellie. (Thank goodness that Ellie was too occupied with smearing chocolate ice-cream all over her face that she didn’t notice anything that was going on.) The cone in Lena’s hand cracked and it wasn’t until then that she realised how hard she was clenching her fists.

“I’m going to ask Henry if he wants something as well. You have an eye on her, right?” Lena asked as she threw the rest of her cone into the trash.

“Of course,” Alex said. The smile had vanished from her face and maybe Lena’s tone had been a little bit too harsh but she could apologize for it later.

 

Thankfully, Lucy said she had to leave right after she’d finished eating. It wasn’t that Lena wanted to get rid of her, she surely was a nice person, but recently she just had not a single nerve left to deal with this.

But just as she thought that they were finally alone now, she could hear Lucy’s voice again.

“Hey Danvers!” Lucy shouted all the way across the road. “I still wanna see the lingerie you bought. Don’t show Lena before me. Unless she has already seen it?”

“Lucy what the f- uhm fork it wrong with you?”

But Lucy only winked and then quickly turned to walk away.

“I’m so sorry,” Alex tried apologizing again. “She knows you’re my boss but she clearly hasn’t heard of professionalism before.”

“It’s okay, Alex. She seems… nice.” There was still a noticeable blush on her cheeks but it was nothing compared to Alex’s face. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Lena cleared her throat very loudly and declared that it was finally time to get to the playground.

They walked over to the big sandbox that Ellie had already jumped into, and sat down on the closest bench. Henry was strolling around in the shadows somewhere behind them and Lena knew that they were safe (it was just hard for her to accept) and she eventually let her shoulders fall down with a sigh.

“Not to ruin your mood but we still need to talk about the fundraiser,” Alex said after a few minutes of silence. “It’s already next weekend and we need to talk about how to ensure your safety.”

“You’re right,” Lena answered with yet another sigh. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. Normally, I wouldn’t be so emotionally affected by all of this. I don’t forget important events like that,” she stopped for a moment, eyes following Ellie, who was sharing her toys with another girl.  
“But yes, I slept on it and now I’m ready. To plan it and go there I mean.”

“It’s okay to not be okay, you know?” Alex said and turned her head over to Lena. The brunette resisted to look her in the eyes and instead kept focussing on Ellie.

“I know, but right now I have you to keep me and my daughter safe. I trust you, and maybe that is a good reason to worry less.”

Finally, she looked at Alex with a small smile on her lips. It wasn’t entirely true, she was still worrying way too much, but she needed to get her life back under control. She couldn’t be a mess forever.

After observing her for a few seconds with a look that seemed just a little distrusting, Alex just nodded her okay and started talking about her thoughts on how the event should go.

They talked about the most important steps first and it became clear to Lena that Alex had everything under control. She truly was the best possible candidate she could’ve gotten for this job, which also reminded her that maybe… just maybe she would have to find another bodyguard soon. But for that she needed to ask a question first, and Lena wasn’t someone, who was afraid to ask someone else out. Not at all.

“Would you go to the fundraiser with me?” She blurted out before her brain caught up. That wasn’t how she’d wanted to ask but it was okay. She had asked. She had done it.

“Of course I will be there! You two will be safe the whole time.”

“No, that’s not uhm… I meant-“ but before she could finish her sentence a loud thunder rolled across the sky right over them. _‘-as a date,’_ Lena finished in her head and sighed. She thought about trying again but right then the sky cracked open and the first few drops started to fall. Alex had already hurried over to the sandbox to get Ellie, who was certainly not amused. 

The universe really seemed to hate her sometimes.

“Come on, we need to leave now unless you want to get wet,” Alex said to Lena once she had Ellie ready to leave.

A dirty joke crossed Lena’s mind and she could feel her cheeks heat up once again. 

_Oh darling, you have no idea._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello guys!  
> This chapter is... a lot. I'm prepared to be screamed at, especially because there won't be a new one next week (because I'm moving, yeyy).  
> But for now: have fun!

Only when the car doors were closed, all of them breathed a sigh of relief. Alex and Lena looked at each other and grinned. They had barely made it before the rain had started pouring down. Large drops aggressively hit the roof and the windows. The car behind them flashed its lights, indicating that Henry had also made it back. Alex was about to start the motor and pull out of the parking lot when Lena stopped her.

“I think I left my sunglasses on the park bench.”

“Well, as far as I can tell you don’t need them right now,” Alex said, which earned her a raised eyebrow from Lena.

“I just bought them. They were $2000.”

At that, Alex’s eyes got wide, “What? Why would you- never mind.”

“They are Cartier,” Lena said quietly and it almost sounded as if she was trying to defend herself. “Doesn’t matter, I’ll just buy new ones.”

Alex looked over to her, thinking, calculating for a moment. Then she rested her head against the seat and sighed. 

“Lock the car,” she said and before Lena knew what Alex meant, the redhead had already bolted out of the door into the ongoing thunderstorm.

 

It was not longer than a minute later that a person, blurred through the rain, came running back to the car. The redhead frantically knocked against the car window, but Lena had forgotten to lock the doors anyway.

Alex dropped back into the driver seat, completely drenched from head to toe. It was silent for a second, just heavy breathing and the loud rain could be heard. Alex blew a drop of water from her nose and sent it flying away before she turned to Lena. The CEO had a hard time trying not to laugh at the sight of Alex. The water was still running down her back, her hair sticking to her face and she looked just a little pissed. After a second of rethinking all of her life decisions, the redhead handed the sunglasses over.

“You know you can get the same glasses at Wallmart for like $5, right?”

 

In the end, Alex’s heroic safe had resulted in her ruining the car seats of Lena’s very expensive Porsche. Alex cringed as she saw the stain she’d left behind.

And even though she was terribly cold and just wanted to get a hot shower and not talk to anyone, when Ellie laughed at the squishy sound her shoes made with all the water inside, Alex couldn’t help but laugh along.

She pulled off her shoes and jacket in the hall, trying to not make a mess (and horribly failing). Lena wasn’t prepared to see Alex in her also drenched t-shirt, which stuck to her body like a second skin. She had to gulp heavily before she was able to look Alex in the eyes again.

“Go take a shower, I’ll make you a tea.”

Alex just nodded and brushed her hair back with her hands. A small smile was painted on her face as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d gotten into. She then walked into the direction of the bathroom, already starting to strip off her shirt. 

Lena had to sit down for a moment.

 

When Alex walked back into the kitchen, she was wearing a well-worn sweater and fuzzy socks. Her hair was still damp and her cheeks were rosy. Lena looked at her for a moment to appreciate just how soft Alex looked like that.

“I know you shouldn’t drink on the job but I thought it might warm you up,” she eventually said when she’d stared enough and handed Alex a steaming mug.

“Thank you.”

The redhead accepted it with a smile. It looked like tea but the smell told her something different.

“It’s the least I could do after your heroic safe out there.”

Alex snorted into her tea and grinned. “Yeah, remind me to never do that again.”

Then she looked over her shoulder towards the hallway, where Rosa was mopping the floor. She mouthed a “sorry” to the older woman, who just waved it off with a smile.

“Drink more tea so you don’t get sick,” she said instead of complaining and Alex’s heart melted once again.

“She’s right,” Lena said and got up from her chair to grab the tea pot. “You can’t get sick. I won’t survive the next week without you.”

“Don’t worry,” Alex said with a sly grin. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”

 

 

True to Alex’s promise, she didn’t get sick and Lena also didn’t die. The week passed by rather quickly, too quickly for Lena’s liking. She’d missed so much work lately, that she had a lot to catch up on while at the same time planning the upcoming fund-raiser.

She’d sent Alex dress shopping with Ellie, which she felt terrible about because she had promised Ellie that they would go together. But the girl didn’t seem to mind that much and neither did Alex.

“Take my credit card but try not to spend more than $5000 on the dress. I don’t want her to be spoiled too much,” Lena had said and Alex had responded with a loud laughter. It took a second before she’d realised that Lena wasn’t joking. Alex had then proceeded to look at her with wide eyes before she went to grab Ellie.

 

 

The day of the fund-raiser had come way too fast. To Lena it felt as if she had only blinked once and suddenly the week was over. So now it was Saturday afternoon, Lena was pacing back and forth in front of her closet. She knew that she needed to get into the shower right now if she still wanted to have enough time to get ready but she also couldn’t stop herself from overthinking.  
Maybe going out tonight was a big mistake. It would make the perfect opportunity for someone to attack them. But on the other hand, she’d never had better security at an event before. Everything was planned perfectly. And she couldn’t just let the kids at the hospital and everyone else who profited from tonight’s donations down. 

A knock on the door made her stop in her tracks. 

“Hey,” Alex popped her head into the room. “I’ll leave to get my stuff for tonight. I’ll be back in about half an hour. Henry and Aaron will watch out, so no need to worry. I just wanted to tell you.”

Lena quickly nodded. “Okay, thanks.”

Alex was about to turn away when she stopped and looked Lena up and down again. “Are you okay?”

Lena scoffed a little and shook her head. 

“No, not at all.” She started fidgeting with her hands again, looking down at the floor. “I feel like I need a drink but I know that I shouldn’t drink when I’m feeling like this,” she eventually admitted. 

Alex smiled at the confession and stepped inside the large bedroom. Her face made it clear that she was proud of Lena. Proud for even starting to think in a different way than before.

“I don’t think it is necessary for me to ramble all my problems to you again so let’s just say it’s the usual. But I’ll be okay I think.” The look in her eyes said something completely different. She looked away from Alex and back down at her hands. It was true, she would be okay. She just needed to believe it.

Lena opened her mouth to say something and maybe put her thoughts and fears into words once more, but Alex interrupted her before she could do so.

“Okay this is going to be very unprofessional so feel free to stop me anytime,” the redhead said with a nervous chuckle. And before Lena knew what the hell Alex was talking about, she was wrapped in a tight hug.  
Arms placed on her back, holding onto her. She could feel Alex’s heart beat and only realising that made her own heart speed up. After a few seconds of awkwardly standing there, Lena slowly lifted her hands up to touch Alex’s back as well. And slowly, really slowly, let’s herself melt into the warm embrace. She rested her head in Alex neck and breathed in the scent that was just Alex. Just Alex and so overwhelming but at the same time weirdly calming. 

She didn’t know how long they were standing there but what she knew was that all her worries suddenly didn’t seem so bad anymore. Alex slowly dropped her arms and pulled back, but not before making sure that Lena was really done with the hugging. The redhead didn’t say anything. She simply flashed Lena a wide but almost shy smile and left the room without another word.

Lena felt the need to sit down. Of course, she had been hugged before. Her daughter was constantly hanging from her neck. But this had been different. 

She remembered the time when she and Sam had started to become friends. Sam had tried hugging her goodbye and Lena had awkwardly slipped away. Which had resulted in a hurt Sam and a confused Lena.  
After that, Lena had told her that she wasn’t really keen on human contact and Sam had respected her boundaries. She still did to this day, keeping their touches to a minimum. A little too much for Lena’s likings. But how was she supposed to know that her need for human contact would suddenly increase that much?

Still, it hadn’t been clear to her that a simple hug could feel like this. It felt like a revelation, like a new part of life she had discovered, and when the endorphins eventually died down it still felt right.

So yes, Lena got into the shower way too late to finish everything on time but it had been worth it. And as she was showering, she had a smile on her lips the whole time. She couldn’t wait to be hugged like that again. And she was hoping that Alex would be the one she could share this connection with.

 

 

Alex was the first one to be ready to leave. She was just fixing her tie when the doorbell rang. Alex made her way into the hall to see that Rosa had already opened the door for Sam. The two women friendly greeted each other while Rosa preceded to compliment them about their looks.

“Has Lena already seen you in that?” Sam asked once Rosa had hurried back into the kitchen.

“No, why?”

“No reason,” she shrugged but had a hard time hiding her grin. Alex’s eyes lingered on Sam a little longer, but before she could realise what the other woman was talking about, Lena walked into the living room with Ellie on her hand.

If there had been something in Alex’s hand, she would’ve dropped it. Her eyes got wide as they roamed over Lena’s body. It wasn’t a particularly revealing dress that Lena wore, but it showed enough for Alex’s brain to go completely blank. It took two seconds before she caught herself and returned to her professional attitude. As far as possible with that heavy blush on her cheeks.

“Damn, if you’d look at me like that, I’d jump your bones in a second,” Sam quietly commented from the side. 

“I really have to introduce you to my friend Lucy. I think you two would get along well,” Alex muttered. Her blush had gotten even stronger and nothing helped in fighting it.

“You look really nice,” the redhead managed to say once Lena was stood in front of her.

“So… uhm so do you,” she answered with a shy smile. A blush spread on Lena’s cheeks as well and Sam couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the two women in front of her.

In the end it was Ellie, who interrupted their staring by pulling at her mother’s dress. She then pointed at Alex, looking at her in awe.

“She can wear a suit even though she is a girl?” 

“Of course, darling. I told you too that you could wear whatever you want.” 

“But I didn’t know I could wear a suit! Can I please get one next time? Pretty please?” 

Lena stroked Ellie’s hair once more and flashed her a smile before she looked up at Alex.

“How about next time we both wear a suit?” the redhead suggested.

“Yes!” Ellie squealed in delight. And Alex couldn’t help but smile widely at her. There was no doubt that all of her heart belonged to this little girl.

 

 

They arrived at the venue a little while later, almost in time. Ellie instantly ran off towards the buffet and Alex followed her with an ever-present smile on her face.

“You know what that means, right?” Sam asked Lena, who was looking after the two of them. “She’s into you just as much as you’re into her.” 

Lena let her shoulders drop. She didn’t know anything anymore. Everything that involved Alex’s feelings seemed unclear to her. She wished she could read her better, but Alex seemed unreadable. 

 

“Lena Luthor, you still haven’t aged a day.”

Lena turned around with an annoyed eyeroll. She hadn’t missed the man the voice belonged to.

“Morgan Edge, I would say it’s nice to see you but I don’t want to lie.”

It was almost as if he had waited for the second Sam was gone so he could walk up to her once again. He was one of the worst examples of rich white men and never seemed to disappoint in that area.

“Charming as ever,” he laughed and took a step closer. 

“What brings you to a charity event? Did your PR team send you here?”

As an answer he winked at her, laughing quietly. “Is that your daughter over there?”

She followed his line of sight and rolled her eyes once again. Ellie was standing right next to Alex, who was bend over the buffet table, trying to reach for something. It seemed hypocritical but Lena didn’t want anyone staring at Alex’s butt, while she enjoyed doing it just the same.

“Why do I get this feeling that you’re not interested in my daughter?”

He laughed again, taking a sip from his whiskey. It sounded hollow and just wrong.

“You wouldn’t mind if I borrow your lady for tonight, would you?”

“Go ahead and try. I’d love to see her punch you in the face.”

“Everybody has their price, believe me. It just takes some time until they cave in,” and with that he walked off into the direction of the buffet.

The same moment Sam came back with two glasses of wine. Lena grabbed one and downed half of it.

“Ok wow, what’s wrong?” Sam asked.

Lena nodded her head into the direction of Edge, who’d just introduced himself. Alex was shaking his hand with a polite smile that fell more with every second. Lena and Sam couldn’t hear what they were talking about but their faces were like books to read.

“He’s so disgusting,” Sam said quietly and Lena agreed with a nod. Her eyes never leaving Alex.

Then Morgan moved in to softly stroke Alex’s arm, which resulted in her grabbing his hand and twisting it. The smile was back on her face and she said something before she pushed him away and turned back to Ellie, who was happily munching a cupcake. Morgan looked at her in shock for another few seconds, holding his right hand with the other and then he eventually left. Probably off to find another victim.

“Your girl can handle herself,” Sam said and nudged Lena softly. “I don’t know if it’s possible for her to get any hotter.”

“First of all, she’s not my girl. And second,” she threw a very pointed look at Sam. “I’m asking that myself every day and she proves me wrong every time.”

Sam had to laugh so loudly that more than a few people turned around to look at them.

 

 

“Mommy, this is boring,” Ellie exclaimed with a pout. “Can we please go home?”

Lena sighed and gave her daughter a kiss on the head. For some reason, this event was going on and on and no end was in sight. She completely understood that Ellie ad enough.

“I’ll have to give my speech in a few minutes but we can leave right after that, okay?” Lena answered, clearly overstrained by the complete evening. Ellie didn’t seem to feel much better with that answer. She simply crossed her little arms in front of her chest and looked away.

Alex watched her for a few seconds, before she looked at Lena with a smile. Then she crouched down next to the little girl and pointed at a spot not far from them. 

“Can you see that?” 

“What?” Ellie asked with a little more interest now. 

“The waiter is bringing more ice cream to the buffet,” Alex answered with a grin. Ellie’s eyes got wide and Alex laughed out loud. She turned the little girl around and grabbed her by the waist. “Ok, ready, set, go,” she said and let go of Ellie, who sprinted off into the direction of ice cream. 

Alex got back up and straightened her blouse, the huge grin still on her face. But when she turned around to Lena, her face fell. The brunette was staring at her with something that Alex couldn’t name, but it made her worry. 

Before she had the chance to ask what was wrong, Lena had already grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the huge hall and into the nearest corridor. 

“What’s wrong?” Alex barely got out before Lena pushed her against the closest wall and moved up to press a kiss on her lips. Alex’s brain short circuited and she had no time to react before Lena pulled back.  
She looked at Alex almost sheepishly but with hunger still burning in her eyes. She seemed to catch herself, though, because suddenly she dropped her hands, which had still been resting on Alex’s hips and took a step back. But she didn’t get far before Alex pulled her back by the waist, pressed their bodies close and buried her other hand in Lena’s hair. She waited a second, their lips almost touching and looked into Lena’s eyes to ask for permission and Lena could see that she had the same hunger, the same fire burning in her and she couldn’t wait another second, she simply closed the small gap between their lips. This time they didn’t break apart after a second. Alex tried to pull Lena even closer and playfully bit her lip to which Lena responded by slipping her just a little bit of tongue, making the bodyguard moan. Alex’s back hit the wall again and she groaned into the kiss, tangling both hands in Lena’s now tousled curls. 

After what seemed like an eternity but at the same time like only a second had passed, they broke apart and gasped for air. Lena grinned as she saw her lipstick smeared all over Alex’s mouth. 

“What was that for?” Alex asked with a wide grin, still panting for air. 

Lena shoved her playfully. “That’s what you get for being so god damn stupidly perfect.” 

Alex laughed out loud before she tucked a strand of hair behind Lena’s ear. The simply gesture made Lena’s heart flutter. They stood like this for a second, just smiling at each other in silence.

“As much as I would love to continue this, I have to get back out there. And maybe make myself presentable first,” Alex said and dropped her hand from Lena’s face, letting it slowly wander down her arm, creating goose bumps on Lena’s skin. The brunette hated and loved how much control Alex had over her body and her mind. 

“Where does this leave us?” Lena hadn’t meant to ask that just yet but her mouth had formed the words before she could stop it. Alex just shrugged but the smile on her face that she and Lena were thinking the same thing.

“We’ll talk about it at home, okay?” And maybe it was that stupid smile on Alex’s face, or the fact that she still had lipstick everywhere or, most likely, it was the use of ‘home’, but whatever it was, it made Lena feel sure that what they had was more than just attraction. It would be more than anything she’d ever had. It would be simply right.

Lena leaned back against the wall and let out a happy sight as she watched Alex disappear around the corner towards the bathroom.

 

 

More than a few minutes had passed until Lena stepped out of the restroom again. She’d tried to make herself presentable again, while also waiting for her blush to die down. There was a certain lightness to her step as she walked back into the ballroom. A smile still on her lips. But it started to fade as she realised that something was wrong.  
Her bodyguards were nervously walking around and Lena could feel the panic in her chest in an instant. She hurried over to Aaron, who only threw a few words without sense at her and then hurried away. It seemed even more weird to Lena and she was about to yell at him, when she found Alex’s distressed face in the crowd. 

“You,” she stopped her, pressing one finger into Alex’s chest. “Tell me what’s wrong, right now!”

Alex sighed, even though she seemed normal, her eyes told Lena that she was clearly also panicking. The redhead gulped heavily before speaking again.

“We can’t find Ellie.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello guys!  
> I've arrived safely in England and so far I've had a great time! I didn't have much time for writing, though, which will hopefully change soon.  
> Also, this chapter is a mess. For some reason I had a hard time writing it and I just hope it makes sense at all. Please (try to) enjoy!

To say Lena was tense would be the understatement of the century. Her pulse was going a mile a minute, her hands were clenched into fists and she had to try hard not to cry.   
It had taken a few seconds until the news of Ellie being missing had caught up with her brain. And it had taken all of Lena’s willpower to not break down right there in that moment. But after all, the fundraiser was still going on and she was surrounded by people who had no idea what was going on. 

Alex had looked at her with worried eyes which made Lena even angrier. She didn’t need pity; she needed her daughter!

“The security cameras show Ellie leaving the building with an unknown woman. They got into a van and drove away,” Alex explained quietly. “Right now, we’re looking for it everywhere in the city. They can’t be far away.”

Lena gulped down the lump that had formed in her throat and raised her chin, trying to look a little more put together. 

“How long ago was that?” The shaking of her voice was barely noticeable.

“Only a few minutes, they really can’t be far.” Lena nodded quickly and then grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter with a tray. She gulped it down all at once, which turned out to be a horrible decision. She coughed a little, but managed to keep it all inside.

“Maybe it’s best if I’ll take you home?” Alex suggested. By now she was looking seriously worried.

“I still have to give my speech.”

“Lena, we can make up an excuse, you don’t have to.”

The CEO took a deep breath and put on her best professional smile. “I’ve been taught to never leave the job, no matter what the emergency is.”  
Her face was stone cold, while her insides boiled hot.

“Okay, but only if you really think it’s a good idea.”

But Lena didn’t listen to her, she was already on her way to the stage. Breathing calmly while she read over her notes once again.

 

 

Right after Lena’s speech, which was delivered perfectly professional, Alex and Henry drove Lena home. It had taken a short argument, as Lena didn’t want to leave without Ellie. Especially Henry was more than worried that something would happen to her as well, so the CEO eventually gave in.

As they stepped into the house, the atmosphere was quiet, almost too cold. Lena had no idea what she was supposed to do now. What she was supposed to feel now. Alex was wearing the same worried look on her face and Lena silently begged for her to stop.

The redhead dropped her keys onto the table and breathed in heavily as if she wanted to say something but it didn’t come out. Lena only looked at her expectantly.

“Don’t say you’re sorry.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

And suddenly Lena had this weird urge again. She wanted to free her anger. Cry and scream. Get it all out of her system. But before her hand could connect with Alex’s face, she was stopped by the redhead. She tried to free her hand from Alex’s grip but she couldn’t. It didn’t even seem to take the bodyguard a lot of effort to hold her wrist like that. 

Slowly, Alex dropped Lena’s hand. “Okay, go ahead.” 

This time there was nothing that stopped Lena’s hand from slapping Alex across the face. The sound echoed through the empty hallway, louder than Lena had expected. 

Alex didn’t look hurt, she hadn’t even winced at all. The only thing painted on her face was worry and Lena wanted to slap her even more for that. 

But instead she felt her legs give out and silent sobs escape her lips. Strong arms caught her, slowly letting her down to the floor. Lena had never felt so helpless in her entire life. She had no plan, not even a single idea what to do now. So for now, she stayed on the floor with Alex holding her tight as more sobs shook her body.

 

 

It was a few hours later, way past midnight, but neither of them could sleep. Lena had taken a hot shower, hoping that if her skin was burning, the fire on her inside would die down. Which it didn’t.

In the meantime, Alex had called every contact she had in every government organization, trying to find someone who could help her. It drove her crazy that she had to sit around and wait for others to do the job. She wanted to go out there and help. But she knew from experience that taking a child or a loved one could also be a distraction from the actual target and therefore, she couldn’t let Lena out of her eyes.

Alex looked up from her laptop to see Lena slowly walking into the kitchen.

“Coffee?” Alex asked softly, not wanting to give Lena a reason to punch her again.

The brunette nodded and accepted a steaming mug from Alex’s hands. Then they both sat down at the table, neither of them saying a word. Alex was still hastily typing on her laptop and Lena watched her without really seeing her.

After a while, Alex closed the laptop. There was only so much she could do and right now she would just have to wait. She reached over the table and after giving Lena a chance to pull back, she slipped her hand into Lena’s. She traveled across the soft skin until she intertwined their fingers. Only now she looked up from their hands to meet Lena’s eyes. The green was overhung with unshed tears and Alex gave her a sad but hopeful smile in return.

“We will find her. I promise.”

And Lena just nodded in return, not sure if she should believe her.

 

 

Lena didn’t remember falling asleep. She remembered being too exhausted to think, though, so waking up on the couch, covered in blankets seemed only mildly surprising. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and lifted her head a little. It was unbelievable that she had been able to sleep at all. But she didn’t feel rested either.   
Her thoughts were interrupted when she noticed a simple yellow post-it sticking to her phone, which was lying right next to her on the coffee table. 

_Call me when you wake up – Alex_

 

“If you found her and didn’t wake me up, I’m going to kill you,” Lena said into the speaker before Alex had the chance to say something first. But her words were fast and slurred so it was a wonder Alex understood her at all.

“We found the van that Ellie got into. They changed cars but we think we know where they’re headed.” Alex said with an annoyingly calm voice. “They needed backup so I left you with Henry. He is informed, he’ll take you to the police station and I’ll hopefully see you there soon.”

Lena ended the call without a word and quickly stood up. She almost jumped, when she turned around to see Henry in the hallway with the car keys already in his hand. This man deserved another raise.

 

 

As it turned out, waiting for news (good or bad) was even worse in a police precinct than it was at home. Time wasn’t passing. It felt as if it stood still.

By now it was almost morning. The first rays of sunlight would soon light up the city and with that, probably even more people would crowd the halls of this place.

“Miss Luthor?”

Lena raised her head to see Detective Vasquez right in front of her. She hadn’t even noticed her walking over. The detective only handed her a phone without a word. It showed that Alex was on the line, and Lena’s fingers started shaking as she slowly put the phone to her ear. 

“We found her.” 

 

 

Lena stormed towards the ambulance, almost running over the paramedic who tried to stop her. 

“Mommy,” Ellie cried out and reached out for her mom with her right hand, while still clinging to Alex with the other one.

“You’re okay,” Lena whispered into her daughter’s neck as she inhaled the scent of her hair. “You’re okay.”

Then she pulled away for a second to look at her daughter. There was a bandage on her forehead and her clothes were dirty but other than that she seemed fine, so Lena pressed her close once again.

“Miss Danvers, we should really look at that wound,” the paramedic interrupted them. Lena tried to blink through her tear clad vision and for the first time since she arrived, she looked at Alex. Her red hair was tousled, her lip bloody. There was a dark wet spot, staining her blouse where the fabric had ripped near her shoulder. 

The paramedics tried to get her to move to the other ambulance that had just arrived, but Ellie didn’t seem as if she wanted to let go of Alex’s hand anytime soon.

“Just do it here,” she said to the man, who rolled his eyes in return. He then gestured for Alex to sit down next to Ellie and started cutting of the bodyguard’s blouse. The blood-soaked pieces of fabric fell to the ground, revealing the deep cut on Alex’s shoulder, where the perp had caught her with the knife.   
Lena’s tears suddenly stopped as her eyes fell on the newly revealed skin. There was so much blood. Lena pressed Ellie’s face into her neck so the girl wouldn’t look. She had already seen too many awful things today.

 

It took a while until Alex was more or less bandaged up and until Lena could finally breathe enough to stop crying. Ellie had calmed down as well but there was no way she would let go of her mother anytime soon.

“Miss Danvers, can I ask you a few questions?” one of the police Officer’s standing outside the ambulance asked. Alex quickly nodded and then tried to cover herself with a blanket. She didn’t really feel the need to present her half-naked self to everybody.

“What exactly happened? Did this man tell you anything useful?” and Lena was glad for someone asking these questions because she couldn’t wait to hear the answer.

Alex sighed, her eyes switching over to Ellie. The girl had her face buried deep inside her mother’s neck and it almost seemed as if she was asleep. Alex slowly nodded, and then quietly started to explain.

 

_They had followed the car in which Ellie presumably was towards the outskirts of town, which had turned out to be quite easy. They hadn’t been able to tell into which house the suspects had escaped so the only possible option was to search them all. And suddenly, Alex found herself face to face with a gun._

_“Lex Luthor took my child from me. It’s only fair that I’m getting my revenge.”_

_“This girl has literally nothing to do with Lex Luthor. They have never even met.”_

_This only seemed to make the man angrier. He started shouting unintelligible words before he sprinted up the stairs._

_“If you wanted the child all along, why did you threaten Lena’s life?”_

_“I’m not dumb, I know she would’ve run to the cops the first second I threatened the kid.”_

_Alex hated to admit that he was right. But so far, that seemed like the only one of his arguments that made any sense at all._

_“My daughter was in the hospital for weeks,” he continued. “I watched her die. They told me they could save her. That she had been lucky that she hadn’t been in the centre of the explosion but they all lied to me!” He shouted the last part of his sentence. Taking a step closer to Alex, pointing his gun at her. “I was so scared and I wanted her to feel the same fear.”_

_He tried to swing the gun at Alex once again, as if he wanted to hit her with it, rather than just shoot her. Then he ran into a room close by and locked the door.  
His behaviour seemed odd, and Alex assumed that there was more behind it. But on the other hand, any person who tried to kill or kidnap a child was definitely not in their right mind._

_It only took one strong kick to break the door down and Alex grunted as she entered the small room. She didn’t even have time to look around when the man stormed at her from behind.  
She stumbled against the table and then to the ground, her elbow aching in pain as she took a hit at the heavy body on top of her. It felt like his panicked eyes were staring right into her soul. _

_Alex tried to free herself but the hand on her neck was strong. Finally, one of feet hit right between his legs. The man groaned in pain and dropped his gun. Alex had a chance to roll to the side to get away from him and she quickly kicked the gun under the dresser._

_It took the man only a few seconds to recover before he grabbed a knife out of his waistband and blindly tried to stab her again. With a loud scream he came running at her but just as he stabbed the knife into Alex’s arm, the redhead ended it all with one well-placed shot. Breathing heavily, she let her head drop back against the wall._

_She got up from the floor, wincing in pain as she tried to steady herself. The knife fell to the floor, spreading blood everywhere._

_“Ellie?” she yelled into the silence. No response. “Ellie?” Alex called again._

_Alex’s heart was racing. In her mind it had made sense that the kidnapper would’ve tried to ensure that his hostage was still captured and therefore, he had run into this room. But what if Ellie wasn’t here and the unknown man was the only one who knew her location?  
Oh no, that wasn’t good._

_The room was silent. The only thing she could hear was the unusual loud beating of her heart. And finally, she heard soft sobs not far from her. There wasn’t much furniture left in this room where someone could hide._

_“Ellie? It’s me, Alex,” she said loud and clear._

_“Alex?” the girl’s whisper came back to her from the closet. Alex hurried over to see that it was locked as well._

_“I’m going to get you out of there. Get into the corner and cover your head.”_

_The door finally broke and there in the dark corner, the girl sat with her face buried in her hands. Alex’s heart felt so much lighter at the sight._

_“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” Alex whispered. Ellie raised her head and instantly crashed into Alex, sobbing into her shirt. There wasn’t enough time to look at her face, but there was definitely blood. Anger boiled up in Alex, but there was no time to think about it just now. She went to pick the girl up and hissed in pain as she tried to move her left arm._

_“It’s okay, can you hold on to my neck?” she asked and Ellie followed her instructions in a heartbeat. Carefully, Alex picked her up._

_“Can you close your eyes, darling?” she asked, still remembering the dead body lying right behind the door. “I’ll tell you when you can open them again, okay?”_

_Ellie gave her a nod and buried her face in Alex’s neck once again. And then they finally left the house._

 

After Alex had given the statement, the Officer walked away to file a report. The redhead lifted her eyes to see that Lena had started crying again. Streaks of tears had made its way down her face and into Ellie’s hair.   
Alex wanted to hold both of them, tell them that everything was alright now, but before she could do so, one of the paramedics stepped in.

“Ellie is in good condition. Only a small cut on the head that will heal in no time. All the blood just makes it look scarier than it is. She should be fine. At least physically that is.” 

“So we can go home now?”

“Yes,” the man nodded with a professional smile. Lena lifted Ellie up and held her close, still too afraid to let her out of sight again. The sudden movement woke the girl up, and she lifted her head a little to look at her mom. To make sure that she was really there. Only now, Ellie let go of Alex’s hand. Alex smiled softly and got up as well.

“You on the other hand,” the paramedic stopped them and pointed at Alex. “You have to come with us.”

“I can’t, I have to get them home and-“

“You do know that you have a broken arm, right?”

Alex looked down at herself. She had assumed that it was more than just a little bump but the adrenaline hadn’t died down yet, so she couldn’t tell for sure.

“It’s okay Alex,” Lena said, “I’ll ask Henry to take us home. Please go to the hospital.”

After a quick thought, Alex eventually nodded and sat back down on the bed. The paramedic seemed surprised that someone was able to convince her stubborn mind that quickly. 

The redhead blew a kiss at Ellie and promised her to be home soon and the girl smiled in response. It was a small smile, barely noticeable but it was there.

 

 

The following night, Lena slept in Ellie’s bed, with the little girl spread out over her chest. She didn’t care that Ellie was too tall and too heavy for that, she only cared that she had her finally back.

Alex had to spend some time at the hospital because, apparently, it takes more than a band-aid to fix a broken bone. And when Lena left the house the following day, she still wasn’t back. Which was unfortunate, because Lena didn’t want to leave Ellie with just a random police Officer. But she also couldn’t bring her to the precinct, as Detective Vasquez had been very strict about that. Lena had no idea why.

“Okay darling, I need to go to the police precinct for a few hours and make sure the people who did this get a punishment. I won’t be gone for long and this nice Officer over there is staying to make sure that nothing happens to you. Okay?” she asked as she pressed multiple kisses on Ellie’s head. “And I will be back as soon as I can.”

Ellie nodded, clearly not happy about it, and Lena’s heart broke at the thought of leaving her. Even for just a moment.

 

 

Vasquez opened the door for her with something that could be seen as a hopeful smile. Lena walked into the small room, just to see her mother sitting on the other side of the table.

“Oh what did you do, mother?”

Lillian Luthor gestured for Lena to take a seat with a smile. Even here, handcuffed to a table, she seemed to be in charge of the room.

“Well, first of all, nobody can proof that I did anything.” She looked at Detective Vasquez, who was standing in the corner and threw her an innocent smile. “Which is why these handcuffs aren’t necessary but-“

“Get to the point,” Lena interrupted. Her voice stronger than she had expected it to be.

“Well, this gentleman, that I have never before seen in my life had his reasons. He’s just a weak person, easy to manipulate, especially when you get in contact with his psychologist, who seemed to be very eager to make some extra cash on the side,” she said with a smile that made Lena’s stomach turn.   
“Not that I would know,” she added, with an even bigger smile. “But now imagine someone would tell this poor man a way for him to feel better. A way for him to get the universe back into balance.”

“You manipulated someone to get them to kill my daughter?”

“Oh no, Lena, you need to listen. I said that I was just assuming something like this happened. I wouldn’t know about this.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Lena spat out. Then she stood up with so much force that her chair fell over, and stormed out of the room. Vasquez followed right after her.

“Please tell me we can proof that she is after all of this,” Lena said once the door to the interrogation room was closed.

“We are working on it,” Vasquez answered and Lena could feel her heart drop. “Danvers shot the man so we can’t ask him anything. Right now we’re trying to find the psychologist but so far we haven’t had any luck.”

“And let me guess, if you don’t find any connection soon my mother can’t be held accountable.”

“We have less than twenty-four hours, and it doesn’t look good.”

Lena sighed and covered her face in her hands. This seemed so typical. Her mother would get away with everything, even with trying to kill her own granddaughter. Lena should’ve realised it sooner. 

Before Lena had even given birth, her mother had told her to get rid of the child. That one bastard per family was more than enough (a very nice way to phrase it, Lena had thought at that time). And lately, with the media somehow getting more and more interested in Lena’s personal life, the pressure from her mother’s side had only increased.

“Miss Luthor? Are you okay?”

Lena ripped herself loose from these thoughts. Detective Vasquez was looking at her with concern written all over her face. “Do you need someone to escort you home?”

“Yeah, no, I’ll be fine. Thank you, though.”

She forced herself to smile a little and then made her way outside as quickly as possible.

 

 

With a sigh Lena opened the front door of her house. Even after being apart for only two hours, she couldn’t wait to hold her daughter in her arms again and make sure that she was fine. She dropped her purse next to her shoes and went into the living room where she could see Rosa reading a book to a very excited Ellie.

“Hey honey,” Lena kissed her daughter on the head, breathing in the familiar scent and instantly her heartbeat slowed down. She was safe. Everything was fine.

She sat down next to her on the couch and stroked her hair while listening to Rosa’s voice.

“Is Alex back home yet?” Lena asked once the story was over. She still had to apologize to her. After all, slapping her hadn’t been the right solution to their problems. 

Rosa didn’t answer right away, which made Lena look up to meet the weird expression in the woman’s eyes. Quickly, she sent Ellie away to get another book and the girl did so in a second. It took a few moments before Rosa spoke. Softly, so that Ellie wouldn’t hear them.

“She handed in her resignation this morning. She’s gone.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back!  
> I don't really know what to say to this chapter. Every time I warn you that the new chapter is a mess and then the next chapter ends up being a bigger mess. Well, this is a lot of talking and feelings and talking about feelings, so yeah. Get the tissues and enjoy!

_“And they lived happily ever after.”_

Lena closed the book with a sad smile. If only it was that easy. Maybe teaching Ellie about divorce and cheating would prepare her better for life, but on the other hand, depressing a kid at such a young age was probably not the right way of education.  
She put the book on the nightstand and leaned down to place a kiss on her daughter’s head.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, darling?” Lena asked and softly and ran her hand through the girl’s curls once more.

“When is Alex coming back?”

It was a simple question but it made Lena’s heart ache. Even more when she thought about the fact that she had no idea how to answer it.

“I don’t know,” she eventually said. “Alex has to protect other children like you, you know?”

Ellie nodded a bit, her green eyes curious but sad at the same time.

“I don’t know when she’s coming back.” 

_Or if she’s coming back at all._

Lena closed the bedroom door behind her and let out a desperate sigh. She felt helpless. For what felt like the twentieth time that day she dialled Alex’s number. 

No answer. 

Again.

 

 

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Lena tried telling herself that she did all this for Ellie. That her daughter was the one who needed Alex more than she did. To be honest, she wasn’t sure who needed her more. But no matter what, Alex had to come back.

So that was how Lena ended up in front of an apartment complex, early the next morning. She’d dropped Ellie off at kindergarten and even though the girl didn’t seem happy about it at all, Lena thought that giving her a sense of normalcy was the best for her in a situation like this. And after that, she’d come right here. Maybe it had been a bad idea to look up Alex’s address in their files but again, she was doing this for Ellie.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, Miss Danvers doesn’t live here anymore,” the doorman eventually said after checking his documents over and over again.

“When did she move out?”

“End of last month. She didn’t want to renew her contract.”

Lena thanked the man and walked back out towards the car where Henry was waiting for her. She let herself drop in the backseat and let out a slight huff. Again, this made no sense. Maybe Alex had planned to stay with her and Ellie for a longer time? Or she simply moved to a new place, but Alex had never said anything about moving. Lena closed her eyes for a moment and leaned back in her seat. Now she knew even less than before.

 

 

After being at the office for only a few hours (a few very unproductive hours) Lena decided to go home early and pick up Ellie from kindergarten. She wanted to spend time with her daughter now more than ever.

When she arrived there, one of the teachers waved her over to the corner of the room.

“Did something happen to Ellie?” the teacher asked with a quiet voice. “She barely ate anything and didn’t speak all day.”

Lena wasn’t sure how to answer that question. It felt like a stab in the heart, hearing that Ellie had such a hard time dealing with all of this.

“I- uhm, there was a loss in the family,” she eventually said, eyes on Ellie, who slowly put her shoes on all by herself.

“I’m so sorry to hear that, Miss Luthor. My condolences.”

Lena just nodded, not bothering to correct the woman. Instead she went over to her daughter to help her into her jacket. 

 

 

It was later that night, Ellie had cried and so had Lena. Separate from each other but for the same reason. So when Lena had finally managed to put her daughter to bed, she called Sam. Afterwards, Lena had no idea what she had actually said into the phone, but about 15 minutes later Sam stormed through the front door. 

Before she even finished asking if Lena was okay with a hug, the brunette was already wrapped around her completely. They stayed like this for a while, until Lena could feel that her hands stopped shaking. Sam then moved her to the couch and made them both some tea before she sat down as well.

“You love her, don’t you?”

Lena raised her chin to look at her with watery eyes. She’d never even thought about it. Love. Such a weird concept. 

“I do,” she said after a few long moments had passed. Her voice raspy from crying too much. “I love her so much that it hurts.”

She looked down at her hands again, her bottom lip shaking, when two strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her close. 

“It’ll all be okay. I promise,” Sam whispered.

 

Their night ended with Sam falling asleep on the couch after she’d come up with a list of all possible ways to get into contact with Alex and to also get her back to Lena. The whole time, Lena had just looked at her in awe. Sam in her fight mode was definitely amazing to watch.

 

 

The next morning, Lena started with the first point on their list; calling DEO Security. 

“Hi, this is Lena Luthor speaking. I’d like to get in contact with Alex Danvers. She’s worked for me until recently and we still have some things to sort out.”

Lena cringed at her own phrasing but she had no idea how to say it in a better way. The woman at the other end started typing before she spoke again.

“Ah yes, I see it here. Unfortunately, I can’t help you with that,” she said.

“Do I need an appointment or what is the problem?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Danvers doesn’t work here anymore. Could I interest you in any of our other bodyguards? They all went through the same training program and-“

“Uhm, no thank you,” Lena interrupted her quickly. “Do you happen to know where I can find her? Did she switch companies or something?”

“I’m sorry but I don’t know anything about that.”

“Okay, thank you anyway.”

And with a sour feeling in her stomach, Lena ended the call. What did this mean? Did Alex quit because of what had happened. Or even worse, did she get fired?

 

Her thoughts got interrupted by another call coming through. She answered her phone without looking at the caller ID. 

“This is Lena Luthor speaking.”

“Miss Luthor, this is Detective Vasquez,” the woman at the other end said. Well, that was fortunate, as Vasquez was one of the next people on her list. “I was wondering if you could come down to the precinct today. There was a breakthrough in your case.”

 

 

When Lena left the police precinct a few hours later, she felt lighter than she had in a long time. They had somehow found a large sum of money that the psychologist of her daughter’s kidnapper had received from one of Lillian’s offshore bank accounts.  
There were still a few weeks left until Lillian’s trial, but Vasquez assured her that there was no way she would get out of this.

“I don’t know if I can ever thank you enough,” Lena said when they stepped outside interrogation room once again.

There was a hint of blush spreading on Vasquez cheeks. “I had help. Alex was actually the one who found the connection to Lillian.” 

Only hearing the name spiked Lena’s heartbeat. “Alex? Was she here?” 

“No, I haven’t seen her in a while,” Vasquez shrugged, her forehead wrinkled in confusion. “She called me the other day and told me everything she’d found out. Why? Isn’t she still your daughter’s bodyguard?”

“Do you have a way to contact her? She won’t answer my calls and I really need to talk to her.”

The Detective looked at her with a frown and Lena had no idea what to say to get her to help.

“Or maybe Kara, her sister, do you have her number? Maybe she’s listed as her emergency contact?”

Vasquez shook her head. “I’m not allowed to hand out personal information like that.”

“Please Vasquez, this is basically an emergency so I need her emergency contact.”

“Okay, fine,” the detective eventually said. “But don’t tell anybody that I gave it to you.”

Then she went over to her computer to look something up and shortly after, handed a piece of paper with a phone number and an address to Lena. 

“She lives with her sister as far as I know.” 

As the brunette accepted it, she could feel the tension bleeding out of her body. She finally had a way she could find Alex.

“Thank you so much, I owe you one.”

 

 

The seconds it took until the front door was opened were excruciating to Lena. She’d never been a patient person but lately it had only gotten worse.  
Finally, she found herself face to face with Kara Danvers.

“Oh Miss Luthor, I didn’t expect to see you here,” the blonde said. She was casually dressed in sweatpants and it didn’t look like she was expecting anyone.

“Is Alex here? I need to speak to her.”

Before Kara could answer, the elevator doors behind Lena opened and a pizza delivery guy stepped out.

“Finally,” Kara mumbled with a smile on her face. She paid the guy for the food and it almost seemed as if she had forgotten that Lena was still standing there.

“Dou you want to come in?” she asked right before closing the door. “Alex isn’t here though.”

Lena sighed, but walked inside anyway. “Do you at least know where she is? She won’t answer my calls and I just want to know that she’s alright.”

Lena looked down at her own fumbling hands, rather than looking at Kara’s pitiful eyes. 

“Do you want pizza?” the blonde asked. 

“No, thanks.” Even the thought of eating food right now made her stomach turn around.

Kara gestured for her to sit down and grabbed her first slice of pizza. 

“Alex… after what happened the other day she decided to go home for a while. She didn’t tell me much by the way so feel free to fil me in.”

“What do you mean home? I thought she lived here?”

“Yes, she does. But I mean home home. Back to Midvale where her mom lives.”

“Oh,” Lena sank down in her chair. That was the last thing she’d expected.

“Look, Lena,” Kara interrupted her thoughts. “I don’t know what happened between the two of you but I know that Alex… she’s really grown attached to Ellie and to you as well. So whatever happened, maybe you two should talk it out.”

“But that’s the problem, isn’t it? I want to talk to her but she doesn’t want to talk to me and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she sighed once again. “Please, can you help me?”

 

 

When asked later, Lena couldn’t say what had happened in the next 24 hours after that. Somehow, she found herself in a car with Kara, Ellie, and Henry behind the wheel heading towards Midvale.  
It was clear that Sam was the one to be blamed for all of this. She’d convinced Kara to take them there as soon as possible, she’d organised everything at L-Corp so Lena could leave for longer than just a day, and she’d even packed her bags for her while Lena was packing Ellie’s stuff.

“I’m actually excited to go back home. I haven’t seen Eliza in forever,” Kara said, while happily munching a sandwich.  
“Have you ever been to the beach, Ellie?” she asked then and turned around as much as she could in her seat. “Our house is right by the ocean.”

“Really?” Ellie asked with big eyes. “Can we go swimming, mommy? Pretty please?”

“Of course, darling,” Lena answered with a smile. She ruffled her daughter’s hair and the girl responded with loud giggling.

“Oh I love this song!” Kara said from the front and turned the radio louder. The blonde started to sing along and Ellie happily clapped her hands to the beat (or at least she tried).

Lena couldn’t help but smile at the scene in front of her. And with a small shock she realised that she couldn’t even remember the last time she had smiled.

_Admit it, Arias. Did you send me on vacation without telling me?_ She texted Sam. She’d had her suspicions when Sam had so gladly offered to pack her bags for her. 

_You’re not allowed to come back to the office within the next two weeks. You’re welcome._ Came the reply within a few seconds.

_I hate you._

_Love you, too._

Lena rolled her eyes. She had absolutely no idea what she would do without her best friend. Her phone vibrated again as another text came in. 

_Also, if you’re not coming back with your body broken from too many orgasms, I’ll personally chain you two together until you’ve made up for all of your sexless years._

Yep. Lena was going to kill her.

 

 

Lena could feel her heart beat quicken as she approached the glass doors leading to the terrace. She didn’t feel prepared even though she’d had more than enough time to think about what to say. But prepared or not, there she was. 

Standing on the porch and looking out at the ocean, was Alex. 

Red hair tousled from the wind, her left arm still in a cast, wearing a soft-looking cardigan. Lena had never seen her that soft before. She seemed fragile, somehow. And Lena just had to watch her for a few seconds, just to make sure that this was really her Alex and that she was really here.

Eventually, she announced herself with a soft knock on the glass door and took one step out on the terrace. Alex turned around and her eyes widened at the sight of Lena in front of her. As if she couldn’t quite believe that what she was seeing was real.  
It was silent for a few moments. Just the two women looking at each other.

“You came all the way here?” Alex asked after what felt like an eternity.

“You didn’t really give me another choice,” Lena answered. Her tone wasn’t accusatory, it was cautious with a hint of pain in her voice.

“I needed to get away from it all,” Alex said and turned towards the ocean again. This time Lena joined her and leaned onto the handrail as well. “I got suspended without pay until further notice so I decided to quit before they could fire me, which definitely would’ve happened.” 

The redhead sighed softly and Lena instantly felt bad for her. She knew how much Alex loved her job. She had seen it every single day at home. 

“It never should’ve come that far. Falling in love with your client sounds like such a stupid cliché.” 

“Especially when your client is a five-year-old.” 

At that Alex turned towards Lena before letting out a loud laughter. It took Lena off guard, especially when she realised how much she’d missed that sound.

“Wait,” Lena suddenly said before Alex could speak again. “Did you just say you’re in love with me?”

The happy smile on Alex’s face got replaced with a sad one. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Oh thank god,” Lena mumbled. She couldn’t think of anything other than to just take Alex’s face in her hands and kiss her senseless. “Wait,” she interrupted herself once again. “I think we should talk before anything else.”

“Yeah, we should.”

“First of all, you can’t just leave a child behind like that. Not when she’s basically accepted you as one of her parents. You just don’t do that.”

Alex quickly nodded, looking bashful. She’d never had children before but she still felt bad for not even thinking about that.

“You’re right. I should’ve known better.” And after a few seconds she added: “Can you forgive me?”

“I’m not the one you should ask.”

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to see her again,” Alex said sheepishly.

“Alex, you belong to this family. You’re already a part of it, don’t you understand?” Alex simply stared at her with wide eyes. The first tears were already glistening in her eyes. This was all she’d ever wanted and she had been so sure that she’d messed it up.

“Ellie is inside. Do you want to say hello?”  
Quickly, the redhead nodded. “But I have something that I need to do first.”

And then she gently took Lena’s face in her hands and leaned down to place a soft, almost shy kiss on her lips. Unlike last time, Lena wasn’t wearing her heels, making the high difference even bigger.  
Lena smiled into the kiss and pulled her arms around Alex to pull her close. And in that moment, she knew for sure that she could never let go of her again.

 

They spent a few more minutes outside. Simply standing there, wrapped up in each other, making up for the time they had missed together.

“I think we still have a lot to talk about,” Alex said into Lena’s neck. “But maybe we should go inside first. I really want to see Ellie.”

 

“Alex!” Ellie shouted as she saw the redhead step inside the house. She crashed right into the bodyguard, who was catching her with open arms. 

“Hey sweetie,” Alex smiled and pick her up as gracefully as possible with one arm in a cast. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you, too,” Ellie said and pulled her arms around Alex’s neck.

“I’m sorry that I left without saying goodbye. Can you forgive me?”

The girl nodded with her full body before she buried her face in Alex’s neck. The redhead felt like crying again. She truly didn’t deserve the love of this tiny human. She swore to herself that she would make it up to Ellie somehow. She’d figure something out.

Lena and the Danvers women watched the interaction all with smiles on their faces. And Lena could feel that her world was falling back into place.

“I’m sorry I didn’t really introduce myself before,” she said when she realised that she was standing right next to Alex’s mom. “I’m Lena Luthor, thank you for welcoming us in your home.”

“That’s Eliza to you, dear,” the woman said before she pulled Lena into a warm hug. It took Lena a few moments before she started to relax. The warmness of this family was just overall overwhelming.

“We’re a bit short on beds but I think we can make it work,” Eliza said and walked of to collect all the blankets in the house.

“Oh, I thought Sam had booked a hotel.”

“I told her that that wouldn’t be necessary but I didn’t think that you’d bring your bodyguard as well,” Kara answered with a frown, counting everybody again.

“Well, Henry is only here because he wouldn’t want me to drive alone.”

“You can’t be mad at me for doing my job, Miss Luthor,” Henry said, while trying to hide his smile.

“Thank you, Henry. But I wouldn’t want to keep you here for so long. You deserve to be with your family as well.”

It took some time and a heated discussion but Henry eventually agreed to drive back home to his family after Alex had reassured him multiple times that both Lena and Ellie would be safe with her. But Eliza insisted that he at least stayed for dinner.

 

Dinner with the Danvers family was… an experience itself. It was loud and messy, but all in a good way. Eliza had prepared a delicious meal and made sure to stuff everybody full to the top. Lena was surprised that nobody was asking questions about what had happened between her and Alex or what had even happened to Ellie in the first place. She knew the questions would come eventually but for the moment, she felt almost calm when thinking about it. 

After dinner, Eliza sent Henry off with a stack of leftovers he could take home and he only left the house after reminding Alex once again of her duties. By that time, Ellie was almost asleep on the kitchen table. The exhaustion of the day had clearly gotten to her. 

“Can you show me where I can put her down?” Lena asked and Eliza got up from her chair in a second to show her to a room.

Kara waited exactly one second after Lena had left the room, before she punched Alex’s arm. 

“Okay, what the heck is going on between you two and why did I not know about this?” She asked excitedly.

“Chill, Kara, I only have one good arm,” Alex responded but she was already smiling like an idiot again. “Honestly, no idea how that all happened but I’m so fucking happy.”

Kara instantly wrapped her arms around her sister and pulled her in for a tight hug. “I’m so happy for you,” she mumbled into Alex’s sweater. “But next time you need to update me on your love life as soon as something happens or I’m gonna punch you in the bad arm.”

“Okay, dork,” Alex laughed and pulled her sister in once again.

 

 

“So, I can share the guest bed with my sister or with you. Decision is all yours,” Alex told Lena once they all got ready for bed. She was blushing slightly and the pure sight of it made Lena grin.

“We can share if you want,” Lena suggested and Alex quickly nodded. 

“But no funny business!” Kara yelled from the bathroom and Alex had to roll with her eyes.

And as much as both of them wanted to do some ‘funny business’, it probably wasn’t the best idea with a child and Alex’s family in the house. So Alex and Lena got into bed, and while Lena only stiffly stayed on her side, Alex instantly rolled over to her and cuddled closer.

“That okay?”

“More than okay,” Lena whispered back and finally relaxed.

They just lay there for a while, neither of them tired. After all, Lena still had something she needed to get out.

“Uhm, the other day,” Lena started slowly, not really knowing how to approach this topic. “I- I’m sorry for slapping you. You didn’t deserve that.”

There was no response from Alex. She simply stared into the dark, thinking that maybe she actually did deserve it.

“I don’t know what I thought in that moment. I just wanted something, anything to make me feel better but it didn’t help and so you had to endure my anger. You don’t even know how sorry I am.”

“I forgive you,” Alex eventually answered. “But you know, it’s not a healthy way to deal with your feelings.”

Lena leaned back against her pillow and sighed. “I know, nothing I ever do is.”

Alex slowly interlaced her fingers with Lena’s, hoping that the gesture said what she wasn’t able to put into words.

“I thought about going to therapy. Together with Ellie. I think it would be good for both of us.”

“That’s a big step,” Alex said and turned her head into Lena’s direction to kiss her shoulder. “I’m proud of you. And I’ll be here for you two no matter what. You know that, right?”

“I know. Thank you,” Lena whispered. Then she pressed a soft kiss on Alex’s knuckles and took a deep breath to keep herself from crying. 

 

They stayed like that for a while. Just lying in silence, cuddled against each other. Alex was almost asleep when Lena broke the silence again.

“So now that you’re basically unemployed, do you have time to go on a date?” 

Alex’s lips spread into a wide grin and she chuckled softly.

“I have to warn you, though, I’m a single mother who’s also a workaholic and lives with bodyguards.”

“You’re lucky. That happens to be exactly my type,” Alex said with a smile and leaned over to place another kiss on Lena’s lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be an epilogue and maybe a sequel if I'm inspired but right now it's really hard to find time to write at all. But don't worry, I'm never gone for more than a few weeks. You'll get your required dose of Agentcorp. Thanks for sticking around :)


	13. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!  
> Here you finally have the epilogue to this story! It's a little sad to see this story come to an end but it's time to let it go. I have some ideas for a possible sequel but IF I write one it won't be in the near future. I just have too many unfinished stories that I'd like to share with you first. So yeah, new Agentcorp fics are in the making right now!
> 
> This is a mess of feelings and there are also mentions of sex. Enjoy!

Alex nervously checked the time on her watch once again. It was already four minutes past eleven. What took them so long?

She let her eyes roam around the room once again, even though she had already spent enough time looking at all the different pictures and book shelves. She thought about getting up and walking around a little but before she could do so, the door finally opened.

Not even a second later, Ellie stormed out of the room and straight into Alex’s arms.

“Hey honey,” Alex said with a smile and scooped Ellie up into a hug. “How did it go?”

“I drew some pictures. Kelly has really nice crayons. They’re even nicer than mine.”

“Really? Wow, let’s hope she lets you draw here more often.”

Alex looked up to see Lena and another woman – Kelly, she assumed – looking at her from the doorway. They knowingly smiled at each other before Lena went to give Alex a quick kiss.

“It’s nice to see that you have a good support system,” Kelly said. “Ellie needs it. And you do too.” 

Lena smiled at Alex, a slight blush spreading on her cheeks. 

“I’m Doctor Kelly Olsen, it’s nice to meet you. Alex, right?”

“Yes, Alex Danvers,” she quickly answered and went to shake the woman’s hand.

“I’ve heard a lot about you. From both of them,” she said with a grin. It made Alex’s smile go even wider.

“Goodbye, Kelly,” Lena said, before Kelly was able to share any more stories. (Not that she was allowed to anyway.)

 

 

“So, I’m assuming it went well?” Alex asked once they had arrived back home. 

Home. It was still so weird to grasp it all. Technically, Alex was still staying with her sister to give Lena and Ellie some time to process everything that had happened but in reality, she spent more time at their house than anywhere else.

“Yes, and I even got some homework,” Lena said and hooked two fingers into the belt loops of Alex’s jeans.

“Oh really?” the redhead answered with a wicked grin.

“Yeah,” Lena whispered and pressed a few kisses along Alex’s jaw. “Kelly said we should get some alone time and,” she slowly trailed her fingers over Alex’s arms, sending shivers down her back. “And talk about our feelings.”

“Huh?” 

Lena dropped her hands, a small grin forming on her face. 

“Oh you’re a little shit, Luthor.”

Lena’s only response was a loud laughter before she pulled Alex in for a kiss before she suddenly turned shy again.  
“But can we actually do that? Talk about our feelings? I think it would be good for me.”

“Of course, darling. I’ll cook dinner and-“ Lena raised her eyebrow. “I’ll order dinner and once Ellie is asleep, we can talk. Sounds good?”

The brunette only nodded and then wrapped her arms around Alex. She still couldn’t believe how she deserved someone so… someone like Alex.

 

 

Over the past few weeks Lena had gotten better at talking about her feelings. It was easy, being around Alex. She was so gentle and understanding that sometimes it even felt like a little too much. Lena wasn’t used to being treated like this. And she wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to it.

_“I love this view.”_

_Lena looked over at Alex to see that the redhead had her back turned to the beach and was smiling at the other woman instead._

_“Stop looking at me like a lovesick puppy. I can’t handle so much attention.”_

_“Yeah, sure,” Alex said with a grin and pulled Lena in to give her a soft kiss. “I’m just so happy that you’re here. That we’re both here.”_

_“Me too,” Lena answered and buried her hands in Alex’s hair to pull her down and show her exactly how happy she was._

_Unfortunately, they got interrupted by Eliza after only a second. “Kids, dinner is ready,” she said, while giving them a knowing smile._

_“You know, I love staying with your family,” Lena whispered softly. “But I’d love to get some alone time with you.”_

_Lena had to grin at the way Alex’s eyes widened._

_“Mom and Kara wanted to go to the farmers market tomorrow morning. If we ask nicely, they’ll take Ellie and we have the house to ourselves.”_

_“I can’t have sex with you in your childhood bedroom.”_

_“Why not? We can turn the stuffed animals around so they’re not watching.”_

_“You’re… something, Alex Danvers.”_

_“Eh, I’ve been told.”_

 

 

“Okay, so we have established that you’re a big softy,” Alex said and handed Lena a steaming mug and then dropped down on the couch right next to her.

“It’s just that I haven’t been in a serious relationship in a really long time and you’re kind of perfect and that doesn’t make things easier.”

“But this isn’t moving too fast for you, is it?” Alex asked with a worried frown on her face.

“I don’t know. It feels good. All of it.”

“Even when… you know,” Alex wiggled her eyebrows. “When someone cries during sex my first thought is that I did something wrong.”

 

 

_She could feel Lena’s thighs shaking as they pressed closer around her head. Alex tried to pull her even closer, not caring about needing to breathe as she was surrounded by Lena._

_But instead of a moan, she heard her sobbing._

_Alex raised her head and tried to shake the messy red hair out of her face._

_“Hey baby, are you okay?” Alex asked, voice deep and hoarse, still breathing heavily. She reached up softly pushed a strand of sweaty hair out of Lena’s face._

_The brunette tried to quickly wipe away the few tears that had escaped her eyes._

_“Yeah, I’m fine. Keep going.”_

_“You don’t look fine.”_

_Lena let out another sob and angrily wiped the fresh tears from her cheeks._

_“I just love you so much. God, Alex.”_

_A soft smile spread on the redhead’s face and quickly she leaned in too kiss the tears from Lena’s face._

_“I love you, too,” she whispered before slowly kissing her way back down._

_Lena cried out again. This time in a good way._

 

 

Lena could feel her face heat up. “I just-“ she stopped herself, unsure how to put her thoughts into words. “You are just so much. So loving and caring and it’s a lot. And I’m still getting used to that.” 

A small smile spread on Alex’s face, making the frown disappear. She reached over and intertwined their fingers before Lena continued.

“With you I can be vulnerable. I always had the feeling that I could. And that doesn’t come easily for someone like me.”

“I know, which is why I appreciate it even more.”

Then Alex smiled at her again, with those soft brown eyes looking right into her soul.

“God, this feelings-talk has too many feelings. Where is Sam and her inappropriate comments when you need her?” Lena groaned, causing Alex to laugh out loud.

“You know, I think Sam is really good for you. Even though she is a little shit,” Lena chuckled slightly at that. “But she cares about you.”

 

 

_The knock on the door made Alex tense up instantly. It had developed after years on the job; the vigilance, always being alert. She gestured at the others to stay in the living room before she made her way to the door, already spotting anything she could possibly use to defend herself._

_After a glance through the peep hole, Alex let out a sigh and opened the door._

_“Hey guys! Can I join the family vacation?” Sam yelled at her. She was wearing a wide grin and held a bottle of wine in her hands._

_Alex just rolled her eyes, but with a smile on her face as she opened the door wider to let her in._

_For some inexplicable reasons, Eliza instantly took Sam to her heart and welcomed her to the suddenly very big family. And after all Alex had to admit that she actually started to like Lena’s best friend._

_It only took one day, though, until the actual intentions of this visit became clear._

_“You,” Sam said and pressed a finger into Alex’s chest. “I still have to talk to you.”_

_“Okay?” Alex answered slowly and threw a quick glance at Lena. The brunette only rolled her eyes._

_“You got this,” Lena then said and pat on Alex’s shoulder before she ran after Ellie, who was about to fall into the ocean (which, admittedly, the girl seemed very excited about)._

_“So you think you’re good enough for my best friend, huh?”_

_A grin spread on Alex’s face. “Oh, is this your shovel talk?”_

_“Yes, now stop smiling this is serious,” Sam said, putting both hands on her hips. “I know you’re a bodyguard and carrying a gun and whatever. But I know how to use a shovel. And by that I mean; I’m literally going to punch you with a shovel if you ever hurt her again. And I don’t want to because I actually like you.”_

_“I’ll try my best not to give you any reason then,” Alex answered with a smile. “And don’t tell anybody, but I like you, too.”_

 

 

“Ellie really got herself a great family. With lots of weird and overprotective aunts. She’s a lucky kid. Apart from the kidnapping thing.”

“I’m afraid that it might happen again,” Lena admitted quietly after a few seconds. Alex sighed and put her mug down on the table. 

“You know I can’t promise that something like this will never happen again.” Lena nodded slowly, a sad look in her eyes.

“But for now, your mother is in prison and the rest of the world has seen that this family can protect itself.”

Lena nodded again and Alex squeezed her hands a little tighter. 

“And not to brag but dating a woman has raised your social status immensely,” the redhead said with a grin. “Dating me is the solution to all your problems.”

“Yeah yeah, keep dreaming about that,” Lena answered with a smile but she knew that there was some truth to it. Ever since the press had found out about their relationship the articles about her had gotten more and more positive. The fewer people hated her, the saver it was for Ellie out there.

 

It was quiet for some time. They both drank their tea in silence. The severity of it all still hanging over them.

“She’s my entire life. She’s my heart. I couldn’t live without her.” 

“And I will always protect her. I promise.”

Lena smiled softly as she leaned her head against Alex’s shoulder. Alex placed a soft kiss on her head and let her thoughts drift away. 

It was a promise she intended to keep.

 

Because that morning at her mother’s house in Midvale, when Alex had woken up with a tiny elbow in her face and feet pressing into her stomach. She’d opened her eyes to see Ellie squeezed in between her and Lena. Lena, whose hand she was almost still holding with only two fingers intertwined. 

 

That morning, Alex realised that without noticing it, she’d become part of a family. 

 

That morning, Alex decided that she wanted to marry Lena Luthor and never let go of this family ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for sticking around! I hope to see y'all again for the next adventure :)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Please tell me what you think!


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